Jack Straw: I think the hon. Gentleman will find that the second inquest was resumed on 6 February, which is a non-trivial fact because it is after I made my Second Reading speech rather than before. This is what the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), has just told me, and if she is wrong she will be given career advice at the end of Question Time and I will make a grovelling apology.  [Interruption.] In any event, we have always made it clear that the circumstances in which a non-jury inquest might be necessary would be few and far between. I hope that the House will regard it as a good thing rather than a bad thing that, as a result of further examination of the original circumstances that led to the judgment that two of the inquests had to be held without a jury, we have now got the number down to one. Surely that is a good thing.

Bridget Prentice: It is important that the House recognises the zealousness with which my hon. Friend has pursued this issue, and it is very much down to his campaigning that the guidance has been introduced—I congratulate him on that. My officials have discussed this with the crematorium managers organisations, and they have assured us that they welcome the guidance in principle and that they will participate in arrangements to monitor its implementation. May I take the opportunity to say again that where there is no need for a memorial to have been staked or laid down, we would expect the cemetery operator responsible to consider restoring it. The guidance recommends that neither mechanical pressure testing nor stakes should be used routinely, and although there may be the occasional case where careful and sensitive use of such equipment might be appropriate, it is clear that it is not appropriate in the vast majority of cases. We will continue to pursue that policy and encourage local authorities to do so too.

David Taylor: Last week's National Audit Office report on C-NOMIS excoriated senior NOMS management for an information and communications technology project whose lifetime costs have tripled to £700 million in just three years. I exculpate the Minister, who is a very able man of great integrity, but what should be done about the lamentable failures of that ill-conceived, incoherent and incompetent organisation? Perhaps the guilty parties in EDS, Syscon and NOMS could be locked up for egregious negligence as a pilot group in one of the Minister's fabled Titan prisons—if there is one big enough.

David Hanson: I take it from that that my hon. Friend has some concerns about how the project was managed. He mentioned a figure of £700 million. On assuming this office, I took steps to review the C-NOMIS project and to put a moratorium on it when the costs were £155 million, in order to avoid the £700 million bill that I would have expected to receive had the project continued under the proposals at the time. There were difficulties in the project, but we have put it back on track. We have revised the costings, the project will be completed by July next year, at the latest, and it will cost significantly less thanks to the actions that we took than was projected in the first place. I take my hon. Friend's point and I recognise the serious failings that the NAO drew to our attention.

Julian Lewis: I thank the Minister for allowing a free vote on the issue of the keeping of candidates' addresses confidential, if they so wish, at election time. I also thank him for the excellent assistance that I received from his officials in making it possible to draft such a satisfactory clause, which has now gone to the other place. Given that this House has expressed its view—in a free vote by every party, apart from the Liberal Democrats—does he agree that it would be bizarre if the unelected House were to try to interfere with the clause? Can he give any indication as to what attitude the Government will take in the other place on the fulfilment of the wishes of this House? If the matter comes back here, will he guarantee that we will have enough time for a full debate on the subject?

David Hanson: I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. I shall certainly look at the debate that took place several weeks ago in Westminster Hall. As it happens, we have also been well engaged with the Prison Reform Trust on this issue. I attended the launch of the "No One Knows" programme last November with the director general of the National Offender Management Service to look at a range of issues to do with how we can support people with learning difficulties. As my hon. Friend will know, a number of individuals have found themselves in prison whose learning difficulties are contributing to their having a much more difficult time there than would be the case. It is important that we look at the recommendations. As we said at the conference in November, we welcome the recommendations and will look at how we can address them in a serious and practical way.

Jack Straw: I am happy to look in detail at what the hon. Gentleman says, as will the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson). However, the hon. Gentleman may be aware that I visited Norfolk 10 days ago to open the new headquarters of the Norfolk probation service. I was there able greatly to commend the work of Norfolk's police, probation service, courts and local authorities in working together to get crime down. They have made streets and communities much safer, and we are determined to ensure that that work continues.

Food Labelling Regulations (Amendment)

Richard Bacon: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Food Labelling Regulations 1996 to provide for information about the country of origin of food to be made available to consumers; and for connected purposes.
	Many Members from across the House have attempted to improve the law on food labelling, including my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien), and for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), and the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Helen Southworth). This is my third attempt, and I keep going because there is widespread support for the idea that consumers should have clearer, more accurate and more honest information about the food that they buy.
	My Bill has the support of Members across the House and is intended to deal with one particularly pernicious problem in relation to food labelling, which is that consumers buying meat and meat products are routinely misled as to the country of origin due to inadequate and even deceptive labelling. The European directive 2000/13/EC relating to the labelling of food makes it clear that
	"The prime consideration for any rules on the labelling of foodstuffs should be the need to inform and protect the consumer."
	It goes on to state:
	"Detailed labelling...is the most appropriate since it creates fewest obstacles to free trade",
	and that
	"The rules on labelling should also prohibit the use of information that would mislead the purchaser".
	The British rules on food labelling are set out in regulation 5 of the Food Labelling Regulations 1996, which were introduced prior to the European directive, but which cover much the same ground. This states that all food to which the regulations apply
	"shall be marked or labelled with . . . particulars of the place of origin or provenance of the food if failure to give such particulars might mislead a purchaser to a material degree as to the true origin or provenance of the food".
	One could be forgiven for thinking that the law was already quite clear and sufficient. Unfortunately, that is not the case and consumers continue to be misled.
	On some foodstuffs no indication is given at all that the product is made with imported meat, such as the label on a Tesco chicken dinner in a range of children's meals, which simply states "Produced in the UK", when the chicken actually comes from Thailand. Sometimes a phrase will be used to imply country of origin—for example, the Birds Eye Great British Menu range, which on closer examination turns out to be made with imported meat. Sometimes the label will be deliberately vague, as in the case of Sainsbury's roast chicken slices, which the label describes as
	"Produced from Brazilian or British Chicken".
	At present producers of imported meat can lawfully use the Union flag on packaging to imply that the product is British when it is not, and they do so. Marks and Spencer has been selling a corned beef sandwich as part of its "nation's favourites" range with a Union flag that dominates the whole of the front of the label. In small letters on the back is the information that the beef comes from Brazil. To its credit, Marks and Spencer has now recognised that customers may have been misled and is taking steps to repackage the product. That still raises the question why Marks and Spencer used the Union flag in the first place. There is a widespread problem. Consumers are being misled.
	The aim of the European directive—to ensure that the rules prohibit the use of information that would mislead the purchaser—is not being met. The aim of the UK's own food labelling regulations, which call for place of origin labelling if failure to provide this might mislead a purchaser, is not being met. There is clear evidence that consumers want more information, and indeed consumers have a right to know. An ICM poll for the honest food campaign showed that 87 per cent. of consumers in the survey believe the Government should ensure that the country of origin is clearly shown on food products, and 89 per cent. believe that a product such as sausages or bacon labelled as "British" or "Produced in the UK" should mean that the sausages or bacon are from an animal reared in Britain.
	The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in January:
	"A pork pie made in Britain from Danish pork can legitimately be labelled as a British pork pie."
	He added:
	"That's a nonsense, and it needs to change."
	I agree, as does the Minister with responsibility for farming, the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), whom I am delighted to see in her place, and who is going down very well with farmers in my constituency. She recently appeared on the excellent programme on Channel 4, "Jamie Saves Our Bacon", and told Jamie Oliver that misleading labelling was "a disgrace", and I agree.
	The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown), was an Agriculture Minister 10 years ago, and I am delighted to see him, too, in his place. He told the House in 1999:
	"I want to give clear, unambiguous information on the real place of origin, not place of processing or place of slicing; I want to clamp down on misleading place of origin descriptions; and I want to make further progress by lobbying the European Commission and other member states for a system of clear country of origin labelling."—[ Official Report, 28 October 1999; Vol. 336, c. 1126.]
	There is long-standing cross-party support for my Bill.
	On 31 October last year, just two days after my last Food Labelling Bill, the Food Standards Agency updated its food labelling guidance to include advice on country of origin labelling, which is welcome. The FSA acknowledges that
	"many consumers see the place of origin as an important contributor to a product's identity, particularly for meat".
	However, the FSA best practice guidance is not mandatory and the FSA merely describes its guidance as
	"some suggestions that businesses may wish to consider".
	Well, they may, or they may not, but it is clear that the new guidance has not prevented the abuses that I described a moment ago, which were found in the shops just last month. The FSA guidance recommends that Norwegian salmon smoked in Scotland should not be called "Scottish smoked salmon", but that is not compulsory and the danger remains that consumers will be misled.
	Country of origin labelling will also benefit food safety. Retailers did their best to withdraw Irish pork products during December's dioxin scare, but packaging for Irish pork processed anywhere in the UK does not have to state "made with Irish pork", and it could still have been bought by unwary shoppers. Clear, mandatory country of origin food labelling would have stopped that happening.
	There is no shortage of agreement that there is a problem; the question is what we do about it. My conclusion is that the time has come for honest food labelling to be made compulsory. Some people say that legislation on country of origin labelling would amount to a restriction on free trade, but that is simply to misunderstand what consumer choice is all about. It is very hard to see how providing consumers with clear and unambiguous information about where their food comes from could possibly be construed as protectionist.
	More fully informed consumers do not protect particular market participants or hinder the operation of a marketplace—they make it work better. Some consumers wish precisely to make choices based on the origins of food. During the apartheid era, many people, finding apartheid abhorrent, understandably wished to avoid buying fruit from South Africa. Nowadays, people wish to know the origins of food to support, through their spending choices, high animal welfare standards or low food miles, for example.
	There is widespread support from farmers to chefs to animal welfare bodies for better country of origin labelling. Compassion in World Farming believes that meat and products containing meat should be permitted to be labelled as British only if the animal from which the meat was derived was born, reared and slaughtered in Britain. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has said that transparent labelling is vital in assisting consumers to make informed choices. The honest food campaign is supported by leading chefs such as Clarissa Dickson Wright, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Prue Leith and Rick Stein. My Bill focuses on meat and meat products, because with them lies the biggest problem of consumers being misled. The British Pig Executive has described country of origin labelling as a "key area for improvement".
	There is some compulsory origin labelling already. A note from Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue, an international organisation representing some 80 consumer bodies, made the argument for my Bill rather well when it stated:
	"The EU has no mandatory country of origin labelling except for fruit, vegetables, beef, fish, eggs and wine"—
	it could have added honey and olive oil to the list. It is time for clear country of origin labelling for all meat. It is simplistic to suggest that consumers will automatically buy British; the key point is that consumers should be able to make an informed choice. Some consumers might want to buy authentic Spanish chorizo or German Wurst because they like the taste. That is their choice.
	In conclusion, we have been waiting for years for a workable voluntary scheme for country of origin food labelling. The time has come to accept that honest food labelling requires the force of law. That is what consumers have the right to expect, and that is what my Bill provides. I commend it to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Ordered,
	That Mr. Richard Bacon, Alistair Burt, Keith Hill, Miss Anne McIntosh, Angus Robertson, Mr. James Paice, Mr. Richard Benyon, Mr. David Ruffley, Nick Herbert, Angela Watkinson and Sir Nicholas Winterton present the Bill.
	Mr. Richard Bacon accordingly presented the Bill.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 October and to be printed (Bill 75).

John McDonnell: My hon. Friend tabled two excellent new clauses, the first of which would remove the younger rate has now been selected. Unfortunately, the second, new clause 2, has not been selected. It would have increased the jobseeker's allowance by £15. However, we will return to that on Budget day, when I am sure that the Government will implement that measure.

Lynne Jones: I had finally got round to appreciating what my hon. Friend said, but I thank him for his intervention.
	We are in a recession, and unemployment is rising. It would be somewhat disingenuous to suggest that people are unemployed through their own fault. I recall my right hon. Friend's the Prime Minister's maiden speech back in 1983, and my right hon. Friend, who probably had ambitions to become Prime Minister but did not realise that he would achieve them, spoke with great passion about the low levels of benefit paid to those then on unemployment benefit. He castigated the then Government for considering that benefit rates should be kept low because it would give people an incentive to get work. He made a good case explaining why that was absolute nonsense. Sadly, we are back in similar circumstances.
	Unlike the Government then, the present Government are actively helping to assist people to get back into work, and I support the assistance being given—the training, advice and help. However, where I do take issue with my Government is on the fact that they still feel that people need to be given disincentives, in the form of benefit sanctions, in order to engage with the world of work. I disagree with that view, and so did the Prime Minister when he was a new Back Bencher.

Lynne Jones: I do not have the precise total figures, but it would be £750 a year for each unemployed young person. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman can probably work out the total, but it is probably a few hundred million pounds—a sum that pales into insignificance compared with what is being handed out to banks and what has been taken as retirement pay by just a few bankers. Money put towards unemployed young people would be much more likely to help to stimulate demand in the economy than money that goes to failed bankers. Despite the financial problems that we face, it is immoral to expect young people to have to live on such a small amount of money. I am pleased to see the hon. Gentleman nodding his head, and I hope that he will support the new clause.
	In conclusion, I wish to give a quotation from the speech that I mentioned earlier; it was made by the current Prime Minister on 27 July 1983. He talked about the unemployment benefit level of £26 a week. That was 26 years ago, and my right hon. Friend felt that it was a completely inadequate sum. Yet here we are today, and unemployed people have to survive on less than twice that amount despite the inflation that has occurred in between. My right hon. Friend said:
	"The debate about the so-called unemployed trap, and the so-called incentives that it is claimed will be needed to get the unemployed back to work, is designed to obscure what everyone knows. If there are no jobs, no amount of poverty and no degree of destitution will create jobs where none exist."—[ Official Report, 27 July 1983; Vol. 46, c. 1242.]
	The Government need to do everything that they can to ensure that those jobs exist. They can do—and are doing—a considerable amount, unlike the party that was in Government in 1983. However, the Government of my right hon. Friend, who expressed those sentiments when he first entered the House, should use the power that is now in their hands to pay reasonable benefit to people who are unemployed through no fault of their own.

James Clappison: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Lady, although I do not agree with the substance of her amendments. I congratulate her on the elegant—I mean eloquent—way in which she presented her case. Although she was eloquent, as well as elegant, I must advise my hon. Friends to vote against her amendments because they would reduce whatever value the provisions contain.
	As the hon. Lady explained, the new clause is an attempt to increase jobseeker's allowance. Although it was not selected, she tabled another amendment, which specified £15 a week as the amount by which she wanted it increased. The group also includes amendments that would make the work-related activity that clause 2 requires of certain benefit claimants voluntary, and others that would make the "work for your benefit" schemes, which apply to people after two years of unemployment, pilot schemes so that they do not immediately take effect. Some of her hon. Friends would do away with the provisions for contracting out welfare-to-work services—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Some Labour Members shout, "Hear, hear." However, the provisions are an important aspect of the Bill, although they do not go nearly as far as Conservative Members would go, or nearly far enough, given the scale of the problem that the country faces.
	The hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) has tabled similar amendments and I look forward to hearing his case for them. The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) mentioned 1988 and a voice behind me tempted to say that next week we might hear about Neville Chamberlain's foreign policy or Benjamin Disraeli's mistakes with the title of Empress of India. At least the hon. Gentleman said a little more than the hon. Member for Rochdale said in Committee. We wait to hear the Liberal Democrats say where exactly they stand on welfare reform and the principles that they would follow, instead of talking about 1988.

James Clappison: Such places may be available, but the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform conceded in Committee that such places were not available throughout the whole country. The Government looked into the issue themselves and published a Green Paper, which I adverted to earlier following a helpful intervention. In that Green Paper of July 2008, the Government said that they were
	"considering whether we could introduce extra activity, as appropriate, when a lone parent's youngest child becomes five and goes to school full time so that preparation for work becomes a natural progression rather than a sudden step up."
	The Government's Green Paper thus seemed to view the age of five—the age at which a child starts school—as the natural age to support for these purposes. It was only when the Government moved from that position that we began to look further at the question ourselves. Our amendment asks legitimately asks whether the balance is being correctly struck. The proposals to require lone parents to carry out work-related activity are right in principle, but is the balance being struck in the right place and is the age appropriate to the requirements? I believe that Government Members should think long and hard about that in the light of the full history that I have set out and particularly when they consider the nature of the regime to which single parents with children as young as three will be subject.
	Let me make it clear again that we do not demur from the general principle of conditionality for single parents, or from the proposition that work is beneficial for both parent and child. However, there has to be a question of age appropriateness. We believe, quite simply, that in all the circumstances it would be more sensible if the age of the youngest child for these purposes were set at five, which is, after all, the age for starting school. We think that the Government have not got the balance right; if they press ahead on this, we would have to consider our position.
	We will be seeking your leave, Mr. Speaker, to vote on this matter when we have had the opportunity to hear what the Minister has to say. I do not know whether, at this late stage, he is prepared to accept our amendment, but if not we will certainly press it to a vote because we consider that the Government have not got this issue right. It may be that they have wider objectives in mind; I do not know. They may wish to say, as has been implied, that because we do not agree with the Government's original proposals on the appropriate age of the single parent's child, we are opposing the whole of the Bill. If they want to say that, let them; but we are not. We support the Bill in principle, as we have indicated.

James Clappison: I give Ministers the credit of thinking that they want to listen to the debate. They may want to hear what I have to say; they may want to listen to what their hon. Friends say. What I am saying is that if the Government press ahead with this provision, we will press it to the vote. I hope that I have made that clear, just as I have made everything else I have said absolutely clear. We are not against the Government on the Bill. We think that it does not go nearly far enough, and anybody can see that. On this issue, we are going to have to demur from the Government and, if it comes to it, we shall seek to press the amendment to the vote.

John McDonnell: I think the Bill introduces sanctions that, as we all know from our weekly advice surgeries, are usually applied against the most vulnerable and confused and those who live the most chaotic lives. In addition, they introduce a stigma to the process: under this Bill, support, advice and assistance are provided not on a voluntary basis, but on a forced basis, stigmatising claimants as workshy or scroungers. That is my big fear; I fear that this runs counter to everything the Government have been arguing for in the direction of welfare reform policy. If this is about fraud, we must recognise that according to a ministerial statement last month, there is now the lowest level of fraud in recorded history. As result of the work undertaken by dedicated DWP staff, fraud has been reduced by two thirds since 2001 and it accounts for only 0.06 per cent. of the overall budget. If we are to tackle fraud, that is not about introducing sanctions and enhancing the stigma on claimants; instead, it is about following the tested route of having informants and conducting investigations.

John McDonnell: The evidence confirms what my hon. Friend says. It relates to new clause 2 as much as it does to the introduction of workfare. New clause 2 would introduce the compulsory element in relation to work-related activity, and I looked at the evidence that was provided by the Social Security Advisory Committee to the Gregg review and the White Paper. It states:
	"The focus on sanctions is, we believe, unhelpful and does not take proper account of the full findings of the Department's own research or our own work. We are disappointed that more evidence has not been presented to prove that sanctions and compulsion are effective in generating long term sustainable employment."
	It concludes:
	"We remain unconvinced that the evidence to support this view is either consistent or robust, or that evidence of improved compliance under threat of sanctions necessarily leads to improved engagement and activation."
	We have discussed with the various agencies and organisations at length—over nearly a two-year period— what their views are and what they think the reaction will be on the ground. Most of us have worked with the Child Poverty Action Group over the years and I have a great deal of respect for its expertise and the soundness of its advice. It says that claimants do not need compulsion to take up high quality training and employment services.
	Evidence from citizens advice bureaux and the Government's own research both showed clearly that, in most cases, threatening benefits cuts is neither necessary nor effective in moving people off benefits and into work, and they tend to hurt the most vulnerable. What happens to the other members of the family when every sanction has been applied? Most of us will have dealt with that situation, and the answer is that we then have to trawl around social service powers to assist them as best we can.

John McDonnell: I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I accept that it is said with the best of intentions, but my argument is that such sanctions do not work. The only thing that we have found to work is support and incentives. Departments other than the Department for Work and Pensions are learning from experience. For example, a few weeks ago, on 27 February, the Ministry of Justice announced the withdrawal of its benefit sanction for breach of community order pilots. That announcement was made in a written statement, which some hon. Members might have missed—it was not the most scintillating statement. The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), said:
	"Initial evaluation research showed a modest 1.8 per cent. improvement in compliance by sanctioned offenders".
	He added that
	"once all costs had been factored in, the overall sum for continuing the scheme would be in the region of"
	£650,000
	"or £5.60p for every £1 of savings made under the scheme."—[ Official Report, 27 February 2009; Vol. 488, c. 37WS.]
	Under the Government's proposals we are to invest a large amount of money in a sanctions regime, but our argument is that we need to build that money into the support regime and an incentive package. Part of that incentive should be linked to enabling people to earn a decent wage when they get work. As we have seen from recent Government figures, a large number of children are living in families that are in poverty even when the parents are in work. I would rather invest the money positively on increasing such elements as the minimum wage and on other forms of support so that we could get people into work.
	The attitude displayed towards the unemployed that seems to be retained in the psyche of the Government is that unemployment is about individual guilt and individual unwillingness to work. When we have 2 million unemployed—possibly 3 million by the end of the year—and when people are chasing every vacancy they can, I do not think that that reasoning should govern the thrust of policy. Let me quote what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who is currently the deputy leader of the Labour party, said in 1995:
	"The vast majority of the unemployed are not out of work because they are work-shy. They are out of work for three reasons: jobs are not available; they cannot earn enough to make it worth moving from benefit into employment; or they lack the skills for existing vacancies."—[ Official Report, 10 January 1995; Vol. 252, c. 58-59.]
	The thrust of Government policy has, I hope, been to invest in those skills so that people can qualify for those vacancies as they appear. That thrust certainly should not include the sanctions that we are introducing through the Bill, which is why my amendments to clause 2 on work-related activities will make those activities voluntary.
	Let me turn to the issue of lone parents. I tabled amendment 17 because I wanted to exempt lone parents with children aged seven and under from the sanctions. As I said, I shall not press the amendment to a Division on the basis that the Opposition will press their amendment 35, which would apply to parents of children under the age of five, to a Division. I tabled amendment 17 because I agree with some of the statements that have been made previously by Labour Members. I cherish one statement, which states:
	"The reality is that many mothers are forced out of the door and back to work before they want to because of financial constraints...The state should pay for this 'family' care in the same way it pays for the state pension of at least £150 a week".
	Would I even think of moving such an amendment? However, I fully support what the current deputy leader of the Labour party said in 2000. It is difficult to see why we are pressing ahead with penalising lone parents yet again. Why are we are introducing this element of stigmatisation, given what the current deputy leader of the Labour party has said about our knowing and cherishing the role that parents play in our society?
	I want to be very clear, so it is worth going through the history of the matter. The November 2008 changes to the lone parent entitlement that reduced from 16 to 12 the age of the youngest child for whom an income support claim could be made have already removed 135,000 people from that benefit. That age limit will fall to seven in 2010, by which time 315,000 fewer lone parents will be entitled to lone parent benefit. Under the Bill, the youngest age of child entitlement will effectively be reduced to three. After their youngest child reaches that age, lone parents will become subject to work-related activities as part of the progression to work regime. There are approximately 230,000 lone parents with children aged three to six, inclusive, so we are not talking about a large number of people.
	To be frank, the Government's record of getting lone parents back into work on a voluntary basis is superb, and is an achievement by this Administration that we ought to brag about. The voluntary new deal for lone parents began in October 1998 and is delivered by civil servants and others through Jobcentre Plus. It has found jobs for the 64.5 per cent. of the lone parents who have participated, and that compares with the 62.5 per cent. of members of the youth scheme who have been found work. The nearly 1 million lone parents on the new deal scheme are outperforming any other group, which highlights the value of the voluntary approach.
	Again, that demonstrates that the voluntary approach that the Government have used in respect of lone parents has been incredibly successful. The Government have brought lone parents on, given them support and got them into work that the figures that we have seen suggest is sustainable.
	What is stopping others in the lone parent category getting back into work? I am trying to look at evidence-based policy making, and the most detailed work has been done by Citizens Advice. Its report on the matter said that the main barriers for lone parents were inflexible jobs and employers, lack of access to affordable child care, inadequate support in making the transition to work, being financially worse off in work than on benefit, inflexibility in the benefits system, and money problems.
	Those are the issues that we should address. It is not that lone parents do not want to work or support their families, because the truth is that they want what we all want—a proper balance between looking after their children and a job that is decent and properly paid and which at the same time enables them to afford child care.
	Again, I looked for the evidence. Research by the Department for Work and Pensions published in 2008 found that the impact of sanctions on lone parents seeking employment would be "negligible". Yet the Government are going to force lone parents through another stigmatising process: they are going to put pressure on them again and waste a large amount of resources for a negligible effect.
	Why are we doing that? The Government are becoming almost obsessional. I looked at the evidence, and consulted the experts on the ground—in this case the organisations One Parent Families and Gingerbread. They advocate an approach that I thought was evolving into Government policy at one time. They say that, instead of threatening sanctions, we should be offering a premium for participating in work-related activities. That would allow us to demonstrate to people that engaging in work will gain additional income, which is the point that the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) made earlier.
	We need to incentivise participation, not use sanctions. As I said, our aim with amendment 17 was to prevent the change proposed in the Bill from applying to children aged seven or under, but I shall certainly support amendment 35, which would do the same for children up to five.
	I turn now to the amendments dealing with privatisation. Again, I have been trying to clarify why the Government have moved further along the obsessional and dogmatic road towards privatisation of this section of our public services. It may be ideology, but the TUC briefing circulated to all hon. Members spoke about dogma, and I cannot disagree. What is the Government's attitude to the performance of in-house jobcentre staff? The DWP website describes Jobcentre Plus as a
	"world leading welfare to work organisation".
	When the PCS parliamentary group met the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions last week, he described the jobcentre service and the staff as "excellent" and commended them for their work.
	What seems to have happened along the path in recent years and certainly in the development of the Bill is that Mr. Freud has come along. He is an expert banker—I think that that is the expression—and one of his key themes is the privatisation of the service. Again, we looked for evidence of why that should be so. I looked at the Select Committee on Work and Pensions report on the DWP's commissioning strategy and the flexible new deal, which says that
	"fundamental flaws exist in the design of the FND and the assumptions upon which it is based... the financial model for the FND is flawed and its targets unrealistic... there is less evidence from the UK to substantiate this approach... DWP needs to build its evidence base".
	That was the recommendation. We have yet to see any evidence base developed to promote the privatisation of the services.
	What is even more dogmatic is that a section of the work to be privatised is set aside, without even allowing jobcentres to bid for it. Where is the "what works best" ethos in that approach? Again, I go back to the research undertaken to justify the privatisation. Let me quote the Cardiff university research report of 2008. On the contracting out of employment services to third and private sectors, it concluded:
	"whenever Jobcentre Plus staff have been allowed the same flexibilities and funding as private sector companies or charitable organisations they have been able to compete with, if not surpass, the performance of contractors."
	QED, is it not? The research from Cardiff demonstrates the point, but it was not just that, was it?
	There was a leaked report in  The Observer only a couple of weeks ago. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak and I tabled a series of parliamentary questions to ask what evidence existed about privatisation and the past performance of the private sector in delivering some of the objectives set for incapacity benefit claimants and other claimants. We were advised by Ministers that no report or evidence was available that we could use to judge any further privatisation proposals. We then discovered, because of a leak, that there had been a DWP report on that very issue. It was marked "restricted" and circulated to jobcentre managers, not to hon. Members or the House. We were told that it was not published because the research was still in progress and had not been validated. Well, that was two weeks ago; it could have been validated by now, and we still have not seen a copy of it.
	What did that research say? It revealed that the private companies placed into work just 6 per cent. of incapacity benefit claimants on their books, rather than the 26 per cent. that they claimed would be possible when they bid for the contracts. That compares with 14 per cent., achieved by state jobcentres during the same period. The report described the private contractors' performance as "not satisfactory". That information should have been put before the House and published before the debate took place, because it evidences the fact that the rush to privatisation is being pursued for dogmatic reasons and is a waste of taxpayers' resources.
	What have we seen in the approach to the privatisation of further jobcentre work? So far, the Government have gone out on their consultations and in the development of tenders, and a number of companies have expressed their interest. There were regional discussions and consultations. The Government gave a commitment that money would be paid up front—the argument was that 20 per cent. of it would be front-loaded—and that the companies would receive the rest of the payments on the basis of placing people into work. We are now told that those involved have had to re-consult, that the companies want more money up front and that the targets are not to place people into work, but to prepare them for the possibility of work. I do not understand why we are wasting resources and undertaking such a lengthy process when we are praising jobcentre staff to the hilt for their professionalism and success.
	I considered some of the problems that the private sector has brought forward. If we look at a number of areas in which back-to-work support has already been contracted out, we see that some contractors have failed completely. Two external providers of the pathways to work scheme, Instant Muscle and Carter and Carter, went bust almost as soon as they were awarded the contract, leaving claimants high and dry. Other contractors, notably A4e and Maatwerk, have been heavily criticised for poor performance. Again, I just do not understand why the Government are pursing such a dogmatic path when there is no evidence to justify their doing so; all the evidence demonstrates the perils of dependence on the private sector for the delivery of the services that we are talking about.

John McDonnell: There is an argument that the Government, taking a very short-sighted approach, may well want to do exactly that—drive down the headcount. They may try to look at the issue as a cuts exercise, or a reduction-of-expenditure exercise, and dress it up as a way of increasing performance and getting people back into work, or preparing them for work. However, all the evidence points in the opposite direction. All the evidence points towards abortive costs. If contracts are awarded to companies that go belly-up and into administration, we are back to square one, and there will be abortive costs as a result of going through the whole tendering process again.
	The argument has been put forward that the measures are not about private companies, but about awarding contracts to the voluntary sector, or third sector, as we now call it. Well, in the recent period, 33 out of 34 DWP have gone to the private sector, not the voluntary sector. The private-sector companies have largely been the large corporates. We have consulted, and looked at the evidence from, the voluntary sector. I give the example of the Leonard Cheshire charity. It stated that the model that the Government were putting forward would result in the
	"complete loss of the competitive market, to the detriment of small specialist existing providers, as well as the removal of customer choice and control",
	because contracting out is being dominated by the large companies.

Paul Rowen: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). My party and I have serious concerns about some of the clauses in this part of the Bill. A series of amendments seek to deal with conditionality.
	As the hon. Gentleman said, this is a Bill for another age. This week, we will see unemployment top the 2 million mark. The Bill does not address the problems that many of our constituents now face. There are many things that it could and should have done to help employers and to help people who are losing their job to stay in work. I spoke to an employer yesterday who told me that in the next six weeks he is likely to have to shut his company because of insufficient orders. We ought to do what they are doing in Germany and France, which provide support for such companies, so that they can lay off their staff but continue to pay them. There is no provision for that in the Bill, so that company will close in six weeks, as many others have done.
	We are not opposed to welfare reform, but there are some basic principles that the Bill does not address. The Royal College of Psychiatrists set out five principles for effective reform which the amendments should meet. Although those principles are meant particularly for people with mental health problems, they apply across the piece. The first is that there should be clear evidence that welfare programmes work for people. We are talking about introducing a raft of programmes, introducing conditionality, and forcing people to work for their benefits, as the hon. Gentleman said, at rates of less than £1.60 an hour, but where is the evidence that such conditionality works?
	The Government are good at quoting examples from abroad. However, the examples from America, the Netherlands and Scandinavia are very different. The programmes in America clearly do not work and have not been a success. As I pointed out to the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform in an earlier debate, the scheme in Wisconsin pays people who work a proper wage and does not put them on Workfare, as the Bill proposes.
	The second principle is that the welfare system must address people's needs and particular circumstances. Where in the Bill is there clear provision for proper child care facilities to be in place before a lone parent is put on such a scheme? Amendment 36 tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) seeks to address that need. There is no guarantee of that in the Bill. Similar safeguards are not in place in respect of other provisions.
	Thirdly, when services are contracted out, there should be no discrimination against those who are difficult to place. From the evidence that has been provided, we know that so-called parking and creaming—that is, parking those people who might be difficult to get into work, and creaming off those whom it is easy to place in employment—already takes place. Where are the safeguards in the Bill to prevent that? The fourth principle is that employers should fulfil their responsibilities to employ and support disabled people. What does the Bill do to strengthen that commitment? An opportunity has been missed. Fifthly, everyone must have access to an appropriately well informed and trained vocational work force.
	I want to talk about amendments 49 to 65, which stand in my name, and to say a few words about the other amendments in the context of the five clear principles for undertaking any welfare reform. I also want to ask why the Government are not adhering to those principles.
	We support new clause 1. As my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) said, in 1988 the Conservative Government made a clear distinction between those under 25 and those over 25 in respect of the amount that they should receive. Young people on JSA are currently on £13.35 a week less than other JSA claimants. Where is the evidence that that is necessary? Young people's needs are the same as those of other people. I am not talking about child care, as that is dealt with elsewhere, but the differential puts young people at a real disadvantage. We support the new clause, which would ensure that there is no discrimination against young people. The Equality Bill is going through the House. How can the Government say in all seriousness that that Bill's provisions will be adhered to, given that some of the unemployed are discriminated against for one reason and one reason only—because they are of a certain age? That is a clear breach of the provisions.
	New clause 8 seeks to ensure that income-related benefits can be adjusted to take into account work-related activity performed by the claimant. There is already a provision whereby employment and support allowance claimants can receive an additional £24-odd a week for undertaking work-related activity. Why has that provision not been extended to all people undertaking work-related activity? Why should a lone parent who has agreed to undertake such activity not receive that bonus, which is paid to ESA claimants? Where is the fairness and equity in that? Where is the evidence that not paying lone parents that supplement will encourage them back into work? As the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said, there is no evidence for that. The evidence is that when lone parents are properly supported they return to work, and that Government schemes are successful. We support new clause 8, which seeks to enshrine what is patently missing from much of the Bill—equality in how claimants of all types are treated.
	Amendments 40 to 43 would make the "work for your benefit" scheme a pilot. The Government are right to say that in a recession they do not want to stand back on reform, that it is important that no one should be forgotten and that things should move forward. However, I put it to Ministers that unemployment is rising and that there is already evidence—there were reports in the press last week—that Jobcentre Plus staff cannot cope with the number of people whom they have to see; people are getting two-minute interviews instead of 20-minute ones. Why, then, do we need to press ahead completely and make these things mandatory for everyone? It makes sense—again, sticking to the principle that there has to be clear evidence that welfare reforms work—for the scheme to be a pilot. Then it could be properly evaluated and reported on to the House, and we could see where to go from there. We support amendments 40 to 43.
	Amendments 11 and 12 would render the "work for your benefit" scheme an offer, rather than an imposition. Again, where is the evidence that imposing something is successful? The available evidence, whether international or based in this country, shows that providing good-quality support to people is what works, not seeking to impose something.
	Amendment 36 would ensure predictable access to good-quality, affordable and flexible child care. An important principle is involved, which is that the parent should be able to make that decision. It is not for an adviser, who may not live in the area and may not know what is available, to decide what that claimant should do. I know that the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West has tabled amendment 36 because in Scotland there is no legal entitlement to child care. In Committee, the Minister promised to reflect on it, and get back to us on Report. I hope that he is willing to consider it, because it is fair and reasonable. It is a matter not of saying no, but of saying that there has to be access to proper entitlement.
	Amendments 13, 14 and 15 deal with the compulsory elements. Amendment 13 would mean that work-related activity was not compulsory. That is the right way forward in the current circumstances—such activity should be an option, not imposed. Amendment 14 removes the provision that requires individuals to participate in "work for your benefit" schemes, and we support that. Amendment 15 ensures an hourly rate at the level of the minimum wage in any "work for your benefit" scheme, or a wage equal to that of staff directly employed and undertaking the same role. In Committee, I cited the example from Wisconsin where, whatever benefits might be paid in America, it is clear that someone undertaking a work-related activity is paid a fair wage for it. Again, I ask the Minister why that should not take place? Why should someone be required to undertake work, even though it may benefit them, without being paid a fair rate? Given this Government's record on the minimum wage and protecting vulnerable workers, I find it surprising that they are not putting such protection in place.
	Amendment 45, following an established sequence, would require a pilot to continue until 2013, when it would be properly evaluated. Throughout the Bill, there are provisions to set up pilots—whether we are talking about direct payment, or the Child Support Agency and the removal of driving licences—about which there will be reports to this House. Given that wholesale changes are being made that affect a large number of vulnerable people, why can we not have a pilot that is reported on in 2013? That seems logical and fair, and we support it. Amendments 13 to 16 deal with increasing payment and lessening compulsion for work-related activity. That is the way forward.
	Amendment 17 deals with work-related activity, and amendment 35 deals with the problem of a lone parent returning to work. We all want to see as many people who are able returning to work. Whatever our stance, that has to be the case. However, it really ought to be for a parent, particularly a lone parent, to decide when they are able to go back to work. We have moved rapidly, in the Green Paper, the White Paper and then the Bill, from a lone parent having to return to work when their child is 16 to their having to do so when their child is three, if the Bill is not amended. Again, I ask Ministers what is the evidence that compulsion, and forcing a lone parent to go back to work when their child is that age, is successful.

Paul Rowen: There is some evidence, as the Chairman of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions says, but we are moving far too fast. The system needs to be supportive.
	Again, I wish to quote Fiona Weir, the chief executive of Gingerbread. She said during the evidence session of the Public Bill Committee:
	"From our experience of working with single parents, we feel quite strongly that the vast majority want to work; in fact, nine out of 10 say that they want to work when it is right for their family. Usually, when you unpick that a bit, there are very good reasons behind their choices on work, and 40 per cent. of lone parents with children under seven are already in work. Those who are not working often have very good reasons: sometimes it is skills and confidence, sometimes a lack of access to the right child care, and sometimes a different set of barriers relating to the particular needs of the children. Fundamentally, what is required is a system that really provides support on skills training and building confidence, and good provision of child care, but that essentially leaves the decision about when it is right for the family for the single parent to return to work up to that single parent." ——[ Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 10 February 2009; c. 42, Q53.]
	If we had all the other things in place—if the personalised agenda that the Government are so keen to talk about were up, running and working and if we had excellent child care in every locality that could deal with the needs of not just very young children but older ones, for whom there is clear evidence that adequate child care is not available—then yes, the Government could go ahead and introduce compulsion. However, those things are not available. We are putting the cart before the horse. We are not concentrating on improving services to make it easier for lone parents to go back to work, even though we have it in our head that that must be done. We are willing the ends but not the means, which is not an acceptable way to behave.

Paul Rowen: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It clearly does not. There could be a whole set of individual circumstances in a particular family. There might be a child who is disabled or has other problems, or a parent who needs additional training in skills and confidence-building. Someone who has been raising a family will have been out of the job market for a while, so what guarantee is there that she or he will automatically be able to go back? Again, it is conditionality that causes us concern. The problem is not whether people want to go back to work, because as we have said and as Gingerbread's evidence showed, nine out of 10 lone parents want to do that. It is whether the means are in place to enable them to do so.
	I turn to amendments 49 to 56, which are in my name. They would remove the power of the Department and private contractors to issue mandatory directions to income support claimants and their partners. Again, Child Poverty Action Group believes that a parent with the primary child care responsibility, whether a lone parent or a partner of a claimant, should have a choice about entering work, and that such choice requires far greater support than is currently available.
	Child care provision is patchy and we know that it is inadequate for older and disabled children. Child Poverty Action Group opposes an increase in conditionality and the consequent sanctions, which will create hardship for parents and their children and fail to tackle barriers to employment.
	What will be the net effect of imposing conditionality on a lone parent? As the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said, stopping a lone parent's benefit will mean an additional cost for local authorities. Will that family be split up because the parent is no longer able adequately to provide for her or his children? That is not the way forward.
	It is important to have high-quality, tailored employment and support to partners as an entitlement that they may take up voluntarily. Many claimants and their partners have a strong interest in work, but where, in the current economic climate and in many of the areas that we represent, are the jobs that will make the conditionality operate? Clearly, it will not work, and there will be genuine problems. It will be a distraction from what, in our view, should be the main task of jobseeker's allowance: to help as many people as possible back into work. The increasing numbers of unemployed will present a challenge to the Department.
	Amendments 57 and 58 deal with the factors that should be taken into account when considering what is reasonable in relation to loss of benefit for not participating in a work-related activity. The Bill states that regulations may provide for reconsideration of an action plan, but imposes no statutory duty for such reconsideration. Amendment 57 would insert a legal right for a claimant's action plan to be reconsidered, provided that the request is reasonable. In the discussion on clause 2 in Committee, Ministers and the Conservative Opposition presented two main arguments against that.
	First, the Government and the Conservatives argued that our amendments would make reconsideration mandatory, but amendment 57 clearly provides that such a request must be reasonable. Hon. Members might reasonably ask what is meant by reasonable. Numerous clauses refer to reason and good cause, yet the Bill contains no definition of them. If it is okay to provide that there must be a good, reasonable cause for making direct payments to a disabled person, and that a local authority can refuse to do that if the request is not reasonable, why cannot the amendment make the same provision of reasonableness? Both the clause and the amendment are either reasonable or not, and it is up to the Bill to provide a definition of reasonable.
	Secondly, Ministers claim that amendment 57 would shift the balance of power in favour of the claimant. It would not. The amendment would not give claimants carte blanche to refuse to accept the responsibilities that are set out in the action plan. Rather, it would give the claimant who is concerned about what may be in the action plan an opportunity to reconsider that action plan, which would be drawn up in the context of Jobcentre Plus staff being under severe pressure, with a lack of time. Will we get the personalised agenda that the Government talk about or will claimants be presented with a standardised action plan and told, "Take it or leave it"? That would not be acceptable. It is also said that there is no definition of what is reasonable, which is true, but that will be set out in regulation and amended by case law. As I have said previously, that is clearly what applies elsewhere in the Bill.
	Amendment 56 would ensure that children are never harmed by any financial sanctions applied to their parents' benefit. We already know that, compared with many other countries, the levels of benefit paid to claimants here are below the poverty line. We do not want the imposition of sanctions to cause or increase child poverty. The Government have a good record on eliminating child poverty and in recent years they have taken additional steps to eliminate it. Why go down the route proposed? The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington cited the example of the Ministry of Justice abandoning the idea of conditionality and imposing sanctions, which clearly do not work. If we are going to do something, where is the evidence base? Clearly it is not there.
	Let me deal with amendments 29 and 26, which deal with privatisation. We are not opposed to privatisation per se and we will not support the amendments dealing with it. Equally, however, we will not support wholesale privatisation. Where is the evidence that privatisation works? We all know that there are third sector organisations that can deliver a much better service, particularly in highly specialised circumstances, for those with learning disabilities or a mental health problem, for example, than Jobcentre Plus staff or private contractors can. We want any move towards privatisation to be evidence-based, with a clear rationale and with competition.
	We see no reason why Jobcentre Plus could not also compete for those contracts at the same time as the private contractor. However, I return to what I said earlier. If, when the Minister finally reveals his evidence about the operation of the pilots, that evidence shows that Jobcentre Plus outperforms the private contractor, what will the evidence base be? The evidence base would clearly be that Jobcentre Plus staff have outperformed the private sector and should therefore get the contract. We cannot and should not go down either route for purely dogmatic reasons. We should have the flexibility to pick what works best for the constituents whom we seek to serve.
	This is a large and complex group of amendments. We are not seeking to press any of our amendments to the vote, but we will certainly support the first three proposals made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington and the Conservative amendment dealing with child care, because we believe that they would considerably improve the Bill. They also underline the clear danger with the Bill, which is its reliance on dogma and conditionality. The Bill does not deal with the one issue in the real world that we all want to do something about, which is rising unemployment. The Bill is an example of yesterday's problem being dealt with by, I am afraid, some of yesterday's Ministers.

Karen Buck: I want to speak primarily to new clause 8, which stands in my name and which delves back into the arguments that we have been rehearsing for the past couple of hours on the balance between incentives and sanctions, particularly with respect to lone parents. Before I do so, however, I want to spend a few moments talking about two arguments that have emerged in the debate with which I fundamentally disagree and which need a response.
	The first relates to the comment with which the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) closed his speech—namely, that the Bill represents yesterday's agenda and that this is the wrong time for it. I fundamentally disagree with that. It is absolutely correct that we should have a new, or revised, agenda as a response to the recession. There is a desperate need to work with businesses to halt the flow of job losses, and to ensure that newly unemployed people are given a different kind of assistance to get back into work from that offered by Jobcentre Plus and other organisations.
	It is also essential, however, that we should not repeat the catastrophic mistakes that we made in the past, particularly in the 1980s. The recession at that time led to long-term unemployment, and the people involved were utterly abandoned. I say that with some knowledge because, in the early 1980s, I was working for an organisation that ran Manpower Services Commission employment programmes. They were an example of brutal workfare. They were deeply under-administered, and offered very little in the way of additional payment for those working on them and virtually no training. The fact that huge numbers of people could not even get on to those schemes shows how desperate the situation was.
	It is essential that, at every stage, we prevent those people who join the jobless queue from drifting into hopelessness for years and years, because we know that that is closely correlated with depression and with exactly the loss of skills and confidence required for job re-entry that the hon. Gentleman referred to. At this juncture, it is therefore critical that we put in place measures—about some of which I must enter caveats—to ensure that people who have been out of the labour market for some time have the means to reconnect and stay in touch with that market.

John Robertson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which is one more than he made when we had this discussion in Committee. What he says does not mean that we do not have to supply child care today. I actually went to nursery school before I went to primary school—I was going to say that it made me the man I am today, but perhaps it made me half the man I am today. The important point is the obligation. It is not a question of whether Scotland's child care is better than the child care in England and Wales: the most important element is the obligation on the local council to ensure that when the Bill comes into force and parents are forced into work, there is sufficient child care to meet their needs. I am not claiming that England is better than Scotland or vice versa. I just want to ensure that local councils have an obligation to provide the service, so that the parents have some recourse if the child care is not made available. Lack of child care would be more than an excuse for not going into work, and it is difficult to work for people who are worrying about their child.
	The DWP document "Impact Assessment of the Welfare Reform Bill", published in January, emphasised the importance of child care and recognised the risks of imposing obligations on parents. However, it stated that the risks were mitigated by the improvements in England and Wales as a result of the Childcare Act, which places a duty on local authorities in those countries to secure sufficient child care for working parents. Given that there is no such duty in Scotland, the risks of imposing conditions on parents clearly remain.
	We also know that things have been moving in the wrong direction in recent years. Between 2006-08, there was a fall in the number of child care centres and child minders in Scotland from 10,388 to 10,322. It is a small fall, but any reduction is going the wrong way, because we should be seeing an increase. Cost, particularly for single parents and those couples with low incomes, is the biggest hurdle to getting a good job with an income to support their family. So it is of real concern that figures from the Daycare Trust show that the cost of out-of-school child care in Scotland increased by 29 per cent in the last 12 months, while the cost of a nursery place rose by 12 per cent.
	I ask the Minister whether the Government have spoken to their counterparts in the Scottish Executive to ensure that the child care obligation can be met. I note that no one has criticised my questions, so I assume that everyone agrees that this is an area that needs looking at. I have been disappointed by the official Opposition. I tabled amendment 36 because in Committee everyone seemed to be in favour of the proposal, but the official Opposition have given no indication of whether they support the amendment or even if they think that it is a good idea. Do they care about child care or not?

John Robertson: A probing amendment is just that. If their lordships want to press this issue to a vote, that is up to them. I want to try to obtain an extra four years for Scotland to ensure that we match the facilities provided in England and Wales. Why would I push an issue to a vote when I am seeking an extension for Scotland before the Act comes into force?
	In conclusion, I wish to emphasise that there are clear differences in child care provision in parts of the UK, such as Scotland. We clearly need to take great care in ensuring that the conditions placed on parents are not counterproductive in helping them into work and that, in no circumstances, do we leave them in a Catch-22 situation over child care. The Bill is based on what is happening in England and Wales, not in Scotland. I look forward to the Minister's reply.

Lynne Jones: I agree that if somebody has a job offer and real job opportunities, that is one thing. However, many people face a great deal of prejudice in trying to get employment, particularly those with mental health problems. I am very much opposed to any compulsion for that group, because it is likely to be counterproductive. On the two-year period, we do not know what will happen in two years' time and how difficult it will be when we have high unemployment.

Terry Rooney: That argument suggests that if a person stays on benefit for 25 years, they will still be subject to no compulsion. That is nonsense. There must come a point when, for the benefit of the individual—never mind the benefit of the taxpayer—we do something different for them. The Bill is offering six weeks of work experience—it could be called a work trial, but it cannot be called Workfare—for four days a week, with the other day allowed for job searches, skills development and other top-ups to the assistance that those people have already received for two years. It is not Workfare. If people are going to carry on calling it that, they ignore the evidence.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington quoted the Select Committee's report, but he did not finish the quotation, because the report stated:
	"We welcome the Secretary of State's emphasis on the difference between 'workfare' and the 'Work For Your Benefit' pilots proposed in the Welfare Reform Bill and we urge the Government to ensure that the piloted approach does not negatively impact upon the employment opportunities of those on the programme. We ask the Government to publish a full evaluation of the pilot and we recommend that it only proceeds with the programme if this appraisal demonstrates convincing proof of success."
	That is the basis of my amendments. The provisions should be piloted on a gentle approach because this is new territory for this country. We know some of the pitfalls from the research. Indeed, the person who carried out the research that my hon. Friend quoted was the specialist adviser to the Committee's inquiry, so we had his advice at first hand, and he was able to give us a detailed insight into the systems operating in Australia, Canada and the US. He was adamant that what is being proposed in Britain is not Workfare.
	Let me correct another quotation. It was suggested that we questioned or doubted the efficacy of the flexible new deal. The Committee actually said:
	"The Committee has endorsed the principles of"
	the flexible new deal
	"in this report. As a programme that provides more personalised support delivered through large-scale, longer contracts it has the potential to offer better support for the long term unemployed than is currently available."
	Mention has been made of Mr. Freud—David Freud, that is, not the other one. I wonder why he has acquired such a Svengali-like reputation because there was nothing revolutionary in what he said. He came up with two key principles, and, again, they were nothing new. The first was that when people had been long-term unemployed, they had to have much more intensive and expensive support to help them back into work, and that the best way of doing that was to transfer the risk of the cost to the private sector. The second was that the way to fund the first proposal was to use the benefit savings to pay the private contractor. That was absolute anathema to the Treasury and ever since David Freud's report came out, the Treasury has been resisting it, because it does not want the report's proposals to be accepted. One pilot is underway now—I forget where—and we will have to see what the outcome is.
	Some of the pathways to work pilots were partly funded by benefit savings and it is clear that there are benefits arising from the private and voluntary sectors carrying out employment programmes. That is nothing new. It has been going on for about 25 years. The truth is that Jobcentre Plus can offer very little to people who have been on benefit for a year, but it offers a superb service in the early days of unemployment, and especially in the first six months, as it can get about 65 per cent. of people back into work in the six months after they first claim.
	The staff at Jobcentre Plus perform extremely well. What is being proposed would be a completely new area of activity for them, but it is something of a misnomer to say that something that is not happening at the moment is being privatised.

Terry Rooney: The challenge of any scheme and any evaluation is to have a control model. I do not know whether that model should involve those who do not participate at all or those who volunteer. One thing to the DWP's credit is that it is extremely good at commissioning research. In fact, most university social science departments would close down without the DWP. The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) would have been unemployed for 20 years if it had not been for the DWP and its predecessors—it has got a lot to answer for! The Department is extremely good at commissioning research, which often turns around and bites it or kicks it in the teeth, unlike in America, where an extreme paucity of research into the impact of policies lets Washington get away with murder, but I must move on.
	Amendment 46 seeks to delete—it really hurts to say it—clause 4. I am not sure what is the policy intention of clause 4.  [ Interruption. ] No, if we wanted to nationalise the top 200 companies now, we would have to invade Tokyo, Paris, New York and Berlin or something. Clause 4 seems to suggest that, where both people in a couple are entitled to make a claim and one of them has a health condition and the other does not, the one with a health condition will no longer be allowed to make a claim and that the one without a health condition will have to make a JSA claim, subject to the job-searching routine and so on. It seems to me that that removes choice, because one individual is no longer allowed to make a claim and she—I suspect that mostly women will be impacted by the provisions—will not have the benefit that would have been previously available to her under employment and support allowance. That represents a policy deficit, and I hope that the Minister can explain what lies behind that clause.
	Amendment 47 seeks to delete clause 11, which will alter the conditions for receiving employment and support allowance. There are two contribution conditions—the first condition and the second condition, as those who are expert in these things will know. At the moment, the first condition is that people must have paid national insurance contributions sometime in the past three years. Clause 11 seeks, for some reason, to reduce that to two years. It aligns that benefit with JSA, so I suppose that there is some logic in that, but it seems a particularly picky and negative thing to do. I do not think that many people will be affected by that proposal and I cannot see any financial advantage to the Department, so I hope that the Minister will comment on it.

Tony McNulty: Let me start by agreeing with the first comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and some of the tenor of the debate. The emphasis of the Bill is not that those who have the misfortune to find themselves unemployed are feckless, workshy or lazy. In fact, the evidence is entirely to the contrary.
	The premise of the Bill and of the clauses that these amendments seek to amend is not that we will introduce Workfare for everyone or, indeed, sanctions for everyone in all circumstances. Those who suggest otherwise mislead the debate, and that is not terribly helpful in all circumstances. Nor is the Bill made for another time or another age. It is not fair that some hon. Members would rather leave those who are in the unfortunate position of being unemployed for any length of time to wallow in that position. That cannot be right for any hon. Member; it cannot be right as a matter of public policy. If we remove some of the elements of the Bill, suitably crafted, and allow some of the amendments to prevail, that would be the end result. That is not the intention of many hon. Members.
	Nor does the Bill seek in any way, shape or form to stigmatise the unemployed or cast any aspersions on the lot of any unemployed individual. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North made the point that it is indeed the case, as experience shows, that most unemployed people seek to get back into work at the earliest opportunity.

Tony McNulty: I certainly was not suggesting that my hon. Friend was the least bit complacent. All that I am suggesting is that if many—not all—of the amendments considered tonight prevailed, they would be the alternative that the hon. Members who tabled them would have to offer many unemployed people. Those hon. Members have not put forward a substantive alternative. They have not said anything other than "In one instance, we'll raise the benefit level a little bit." As for help and support—the essence of the Bill, and elements of the White Paper and Green Paper—there is no advice on what the unemployed should do. It is important to put those elements on the record, because the Bill is far from having been designed for another age. My question is: if not now, when? Now is not the time to say to the long-term unemployed that there is no help or support for them at all, especially given the deteriorating economic conditions.

Tony McNulty: The point that my hon. Friend misses slightly is that I think that the disparity between the amounts for different age groups should prevail. There is, of course, a perfectly legitimate wider argument to be had about the level of benefits, the relation to wage levels and the minimum wage, and how the two interact; I agree that that is perhaps a debate for another time. However, it is not germane to the Bill.
	On the notion of paying wages rather than JSA under the "work for your benefit" programme, as I have said, "work for your benefit" will be introduced only after two years of sustained, long-term unemployment, and not in any other fashion, as was at least intimated. We think that paying wages rather than JSA would result in an erosion of the incentives to move into the open labour market and into paid employment. We genuinely do not want to create a system in which, after two years' long-term unemployment, the "work for your benefit" programme is the end of a jobseeker's journey to work; it should rather be a stepping stone. I hope that the more we focus on personalised help and support being offered to individuals far more readily, and far earlier—certainly after a year—the fewer people will come into the category of having been unemployed for two years or longer.
	There is a misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of the "work for your benefit" scheme. It is not employment; it is an employment programme. It is designed specifically not only to give people the chance to develop work habits and experience through supported placements, but to deliver tailored back-to-work support. For those reasons, we cannot support amendment 15 or the broader array of amendments—that is, amendments 11 to 14 and amendment 16. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North, said, the scheme is clearly not Workfare in way, shape or form. I agree not only with DWP research, which is rather handy, but with some of the comments made about those overtly Workfare-focused schemes in America and Australia that have not worked in all regards.
	Amendment 36, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson), seeks to ensure that jobseekers can be required to participate in the "work for your benefit" programme only if good-quality, affordable, flexible child care is available. As he moved the same amendment so eloquently in Committee, I understand where he is coming from, but it is unnecessary now, as it was then. I will do as he asks and raise the point about provision for older children, and the issues of child care more generally, with colleagues in the Department for Children, Schools and Families and with the devolved Administration, but I can confirm that parents on JSA will not be sanctioned if they fail to participate in "work for your benefit" because they cannot access appropriate child care. I said that in Committee, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said it on any number of occasions. That, rather like other aspects of the Bill, has been entirely—and wilfully, I think—misinterpreted as "Lone parents had better get a job. We'll force them into a job regardless of the circumstances or the barriers." That has never been the position, nor should it be.
	On the broader issues that my hon. Friend raises about Scotland, I agree that it is high time that Scotland put its house in order and came into line with England and Wales in respect of child care provision. Sadly, even since the Committee, there remains no commitment from the Scottish Government to legislate in the area of child care or to make further investment using existing powers. Indeed, the latest pronouncement by the Scottish Government in December last year, although recognising the importance of child care, makes no mention of any new initiative or additional resources—a little bit of gesture politics from the nationalists.

Tony McNulty: As devolution is dear to my heart, I fully accept that you do things differently, but we would rather like you to do it. That is the point. I am sorry about the "you", Mr. Deputy Speaker. We would rather like broad agreement across all devolved Administrations that child care is a fairly important provision. It is quite right that it should be devolved. I have no problem with that, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West says, the Scottish Government should get the house in order.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) was spot on when she spoke on amendments 17 and 35. The child's age at which lone parents obligations should start in respect of work-related activities is, as she described it, a red herring. The substantive point, which is at the centre of the Bill, is that the quality of child care, flexibility and sensitivity are crucial. The prescription suggested by the hon. Member for Rochdale, that there should be no help and assistance for lone parents until child care which meets a gold standard is offered everywhere will not do.
	Gregg was looking for such provision from the time the child was one. We do not consider that appropriate. It is appropriate for the parent to undertake work-related activities when the child is aged three to six, not least because of pre-school provision at three and four and full-time education at five.

John Robertson: The new clause is self-explanatory and needs little introduction, but the clarity and familiarity of the issue should not obscure the justness of the case and the need to right a long-standing wrong. The new clause would amend the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 so that a blind person can qualify for the higher-rate mobility component of the disability living allowance, something that the 1992 Act excludes them from unless they are also physically unable to walk.
	It is easy to see why the exclusion does not make sense, and more than 220 MPs have signalled their support for this change by signing early-day motion 340, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), which has been the most popular EDM in the current session. I would also like to thank all the right hon. and hon. Members who put their names to the new clause. The groundswell behind this activity is down to the work of the Royal National Institute of Blind People and I pay tribute to its campaigning on the issue and its work across the board. I have worked with that charity on welfare reform issues for a number of years and it has never let me down.
	In addition, I pay tribute to a number of people who have been inspirational in their work on this and other disability issues over the years, such as my constituent Alan McDonald, whom I will mention again later, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett). I should also recognise the work done by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill), who tabled a motion on the issue a number of years ago. It is disappointing to say the least that he was not only years ahead of his party on this matter, but that Conservative Members could not find it within themselves to say a single word in support of the change in Committee. Their friends in the Scottish National party are no better. Their names are absent from this new clause, but given that they never passed on the £34 million they received for disabled children, I am not surprised. They have made no contribution on this matter.

John Robertson: My hon. Friend says that the hon. Gentleman will. I look forward to it. He is a great gentleman and I have a lot of time for him.
	New clause 10 is grouped with new clause 4. I have tabled it to cover all the bases on the issue and so that we have something that will work in practice. Although both clauses are basically the same, it was important to have new clause 10 to ensure that we discussed the issue. That is why we have two new clauses that are almost the exact mirror image of each other, but with different words.
	The exclusion of blind people from the higher rate must surely have been a mistake and an unintended consequence of the 1992 Act. Despite facing some of the biggest and often most insurmountable barriers to independent mobility, blind people were denied the higher rate of mobility support, which was limited to those who face physical barriers to getting around.

John Robertson: I thank my hon. Friend, who is obviously the best MP in Dundee—or so he tells me, and I have no reason to disbelieve him. The funny thing is that he, too, has been looking over my shoulder. I was about to go on to talk about the £29 extra.
	The higher rate of mobility allowance is only £29 extra on top of the lower, but that works out at more than £1,500 year. There is no good reason for discriminating between someone who faces physical barriers to mobility and someone who is unable to move around safely and independently due to blindness. I should like to tell the House about one of my constituents, whom I mentioned earlier. His case highlights that paradox. Alan McDonald was blind from birth, has orientation problems and faces huge hurdles in getting around. He is unable to use public transport because of his difficulties in getting on and off buses and trains, and he either needs to spend his other benefits on taxis, although they are meant to provide other support, or is forced to rely on his sister for lifts to wherever he needs to go. Otherwise, he has to stay at home.
	Alan's blindness is not the only barrier to his mobility. He is awaiting a second kidney transplant and will undergo surgery for hardening of the arteries in a few months' time. Despite all those difficulties, he has been told on several occasions that he simply cannot qualify for the higher rate, because he is physically able to walk. Yes, he can walk—he can walk into wheelie bins or traffic lights or out into the middle of the road. But he can walk, so he does not get the money. The barriers that he faces are just as great as those faced by someone who cannot walk, and the situation is nonsensical. I swear to the House that I believe that the Minister has to consider such things. It is unbelievable that somebody with such disabilities cannot get the higher rate of disability allowance; it is unbelievable that they cannot get £29 extra. Blind people such as Alan feel justifiably angry about that discriminatory and unfair treatment.
	For me, the reason for having a Labour Government is so that we can make changes such as this and give support to people who need it. This is no less important than a global financial crisis, in which doing nothing is not an option. The RNIB estimates that about 26,000 people would be included in the higher rate of the mobility component if this change were made. I understand that the proposal has been costed at an initial £12 million for set-up and a further £47 million a year—a drop in the ocean by today's standards.
	As I said in Committee, and as Ministers need to remember, when the RNIB lobbied Parliament in October, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), who is responsible for disabled people, spoke in very positive terms about how and when blind people would be given access to the mobility component rather than whether they would. The new clauses offer a perfect answer to both those questions. I thank the Clerks and Mr. Speaker for their advice and help with tabling them and for giving them a chance to be considered. It is time for the mobility component of the disability living allowance to live up to its name. It is time for us to right the wrong and to give blind people a chance.

Mark Harper: I am just coming to my remarks about that. The Government accepted that the funding of the change was an issue to consider. The Minister said in Committee:
	"There are always competing demands...I shall set out carefully the context."
	It is worth putting on record that he said that the Government estimated that the additional benefit expenditure would be
	"about £45 million per year, with a £12 million administrative spend in the first year alone",
	although he said that the Department estimated that the ongoing costs of administration would fall to about £2 million a year quite quickly. He said that there would be an annual bill of £45 million, which would rise in the years to come, and that funding on such a scale could not be found from the measures in the Bill. He said:
	"While the Government fully recognise the intentions behind the new clause, accepting it without having the funding to support it would require us to withdraw funding from elsewhere in the benefit system." ——[ Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 270.]
	That was in Committee just two weeks ago. He then paid tribute to the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West and the RNIB. He said that the Government could not support the new clause at that stage, but that he and the Government would continue to consider the matter. The hon. Gentleman welcomed that.
	As late as yesterday, at Work and Pensions questions, the matter of funding for the proposal came up twice. It was raised once by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone), who is in his place, and again by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), whom I do not see in his place. The hon. Gentleman asked the Minister to tell the House why the Government had so far not supported the change, and he drew attention to the fact that we would be debating it today when considering the new clause. The Minister said that he was grateful that the matter had been raised, and added that
	"we need to establish a time when we can afford to make provision for this particular benefit".—[ Official Report, 16 March 2009; Vol. 489, c. 651.]
	At that moment, as if from serendipity, in walked the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Minister said that when talking about finance, he was always reassured to see the Chancellor. He then made the case that the Government needed to examine the matter carefully and would continue to work with the RNIB. He said that he hoped to be able to support the measure when resources became available. If the Under-Secretary can make any progress on that today and give us some good news, the position will clearly have changed since yesterday and it would be helpful if he could state whether resources have been made available and from where they have been found.
	When the Under-Secretary was asked in a written question how quickly the change could be made if the Government accepted it, he replied that any change would require a change to the legislation—that is what we are debating—and that time would be needed
	"to design, test and implement the administrative processes, which will require changes such as new guidance and training for staff."—[ Official Report, 28 January 2009; Vol. 487, c. 565W.]
	He also said that, consequently, the earliest implementation of the proposal, if it were accepted, would be 2010-11. Perhaps when he responds, he will say whether that remains the case. If the Government accept the new clause or find another way of effecting its substance, will that time scale still apply?
	To summarise our position, we have never objected to the principle. Indeed, I have worked closely with the RNIB and we have said that if a way could be found in which to provide the funding, we would be pleased to do that. To date, the Government have been unable to find the funding—and were unable to do so as late as yesterday. I hope that the appearance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at an opportune moment yesterday might have broken the logjam.

Mark Harper: I have just explained that we have never objected to the proposal in principle. If the Government tell us how they can fund it, and where the money will come from, we will be happy to support it. The hon. Gentleman's question should be aimed at the Government, who said for several months and years that they supported the proposal in principle but they have not been prepared to find the funding. They are in government responsible for making decisions today. We may be in government in due course and, when we are, we will be responsible for the decisions.
	I have set out our position clearly. Other hon. Members want to speak and we then look forward to listening to the Under-Secretary, who will sum up.

David Blunkett: First, I think that, mischievously, I should declare an interest because I am a vice-president of the RNIB. However, because a couple of people have appeared to stalk me and ring up newspapers in the past four years, I should also declare that I have an alternative method of funding transport. I shall not, at least temporarily, be a beneficiary of any change that the Government may or may not announce tonight.
	There has been the most incredible collective campaign that I have experienced for a long time, and I hope that hon. Members forgive me if I embarrass one or two people. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) deserves a medal for his tenacity and commitment, supported ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) and many other hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill). I say a big "thank you" to those who have spent years dedicatedly committing themselves to the campaign and ensuring that successive Ministers have got the message and have been able to work on their Treasury colleagues. Above all, I thank the RNIB and all those who have campaigned with it to make the proposal possible.
	A listening Government, who are prepared to hear the argument and respond, together with a campaign, which is committed and rational as well as tenacious, can achieve enormous change. I feel it in my bones that tonight we are fulfilling something that Barbara Castle started in the 1970s when Alf Morris campaigned vigorously for the first introduction of mobility support. We seem to make our best announcements in our twilight hours, so that it is difficult for anybody to know anything about them. Nevertheless we may be taking a further historic step tonight.
	I explain to the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) that, in commending the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), the Secretary of State and my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), who did a sterling job on the matter when she was a Minister, we must recognise that we are not simply scrabbling about to find money to hand something out, but liberating people by enabling them to leave their homes safely and explore not only social life, but training and get a foothold, before they are entitled to the access to work resources. It also enables them to become more independent and have dignity and mobility. The pay-back over many years will be substantial and allow people, who would otherwise be trapped at home, to have the dignity that those who are mobile through being able to drive a car and who can take advantage of other funding streams have taken for granted for the past 30 years.
	Tonight may be an occasion for rejoicing and for saying—I have not said it for a long time—a big "thank you" to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary, not for generosity but for their foresight, and their recognition that a combination of an excellent campaign in the country, the support and tenacity of Back Benchers in all parties and Ministers who are prepared to listen means that we have a Government who will put first, not millionaires, who would benefit from relief on inheritance tax under Opposition proposals, but people who need the liberation of travelling freely, easily and affordably to the sort of places that the rest of us, including me, take for granted. I would like, in advance to say, "Thank you."

Steve Webb: It would be presumptuous to add much more to the powerful case that the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) made. The Liberal Democrats support the new clauses. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) and I added our names to the amendment that the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) tabled there.
	We all remember a cold Westminster Hall, full of RNIB supporters lobbying us. That did not happen just once. Often, there are mass lobbies and the caravan then moves on, to be succeeded by another lobby on another issue in another year. I was struck by the fact that the RNIB came back and said that its members had returned to say the same thing because they did not get the answer that they wanted. Perhaps that is a lesson to other campaigning organisations that sometimes they have to repeat the same thing time and again. I recall many letters that I and other hon. Members of all parties wrote to the Department for years, and the replies, which reflected the official position that benefits were paid on the basis not of a condition but its impact, and that the change could not be made. There is a sense from the comments that have been made that a change may be imminent—we all want to hear that.
	If, as the Minister said in Committee, funding for the measure will come from elsewhere in the benefits system, I hope that he will be clear about where that will be or about whether he will announce additional funding. I recall some other changes that his Department made that looked good at first sight, but later we discovered the cut that had been to pay for them. I therefore hope that if the Minister accepts the new clause, he will be up front about whether additional money has been won from the Treasury or whether he will take the money from elsewhere.
	There are different definitions of blindness and the sorts of people who might be eligible for the different rates. If the Minister accepts the new clause, I urge him not to draw a new and potentially arbitrary line. I know that such matters are not easy, but I hope that it will be absolutely clear in any regulations that he introduces about who is included. Nothing that arises from our debate this evening should lead anyone to think that they have hope, only to find themselves on the wrong side of the line. I hope that he is clear both about who falls within the scope of what he will do and about who is excluded, so that no one who has supported the RNIB, been on a lobby and heard on the radio that the change is being made will find that it has been defined rather narrowly and excludes some people. I hope that he will be absolutely clear about who is covered.

Anne Begg: I, too, would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) for tabling the new clauses. As everyone else has said tonight, it is self-evident that those who have limited mobility because of their sight impairment should qualify for the higher rate of the mobility element of the disability living allowance.
	About two years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Doran) and I were lobbied in his office by two of the workers at Glencraft in my constituency. Glencraft is the name of what used to be known as the old blind workshop. The two blind men came along to lobby us because they were keen that we should turn up to the RNIB lobby in London that they could not attend. They were obviously in the vanguard of the RNIB campaign. It was the first that I had heard of the campaign. It was their tenacity, and the tenacity and clarity of the argument of the RNIB—to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) referred—that persuaded a number of us to pursue the issue forward. At the time, I think that I said something that I often say to constituents—"I can't promise anything, but we'll see what we can do. We will certainly lobby the Government, but don't get your hopes up." I hope that the Government have now listened to the arguments and decided that it is right that someone who finds it difficult to get around because of their sight impairment should qualify for the higher rate of the mobility element of the DLA.
	I suppose that I should admit that I am one of the lucky ones who qualify for the higher rate of the mobility element of the DLA because I cannot walk. That might come as a surprise to some of the people round here as I mow them down with my electric wheelchair. Because of the definition in the present legislation, I qualify for the higher rate, as does anyone who needs a wheelchair to get around. However, there has always been an anomaly, in that someone who is severely sight impaired does not qualify because they can physically put one leg in front of the other. As I often say, however, there are different ways of getting around, and it is how we get around that matters, and not necessarily the mode of transport involved.
	I hope that the Government will see sense tonight. The two blind men who came to see my hon. Friend and me a couple of years ago are in work, and they know, more than anyone, the importance of work to their sense of well-being. If this Welfare Reform Bill is about anything, it is about getting people who have been dislocated from the world of work for years back into work. It is therefore right and proper that this provision should be part of the legislation. Seventy per cent. of blind people do not have a job. That cannot be right, because we know that they are capable of work in a whole range of areas. I heard that, as part of Comic Relief, the person who won the prize for stand-up comedy was Peter White, the broadcaster. I heard him tell a joke that there was an argument in the blind community about whether one should have a stick or a dog. His answer was, "You get the stick, you throw it away, then you get the dog."
	We know that blind people can work, and we need to give them the support that they need to ensure that their lives are liberated and that they can enjoy the fruits of their labour. One of the ways of doing that is to ensure that they can get around, and the main factor in allowing them to do that is ensuring that they qualify for the upper rate of the mobility element of the DLA. I hope that the Government have listened. This has been a long campaign, but Members on both sides of the House have signed up to it. It is a worthy cause, and it is one that the Government should support.

Sammy Wilson: The very fact that this measure has gained such widespread support across the House shows that we are aware that this is the feeling not only of those constituents who have lost their sight, or never had it, but of the many constituents who help us to recognise the unfairness and injustice that exists. That is the first reason we need this change: it will right an injustice in the existing system.
	The second reason is that, despite all the arguments that such a measure would open the floodgates and set a precedent, it applies only to a fairly tightly defined group. Some Members feel that the definition accepted by the RNIB is too tight. We have a fairly good idea of the numbers involved, and it is unlikely that other people with the same impairment would be able to hook on to any change by the Government on this issue. So, the fact that the measure will not open the floodgates, and that it will not set a wider precedent, is a second reason the Government could, and should, accept the new clause.
	The third reason is the cost involved. There has been wrangling over the cost, and that has been unfortunate. Given the budget for welfare provision, it should be possible to find the necessary £44 million or £45 million, even by prioritising how we spend money. And, as other Members have pointed out, there will be benefits involved. For many young people who have lost their sight, and with it their confidence and independence, the very fact that they can get financial support that could enable them to go out and do a job will have a positive impact on the public finances.
	The last reason is that the Government are halfway there already. In fact, they are more than halfway there. Ministers have accepted the idea and have no objection in principle; they are sympathetic to the call for change; they are committed to making this an urgent priority; and they wish to continue to work with the RNIB. Ministers have almost got there, so I suppose the call from this House tonight is: undo the injustice, take the last step and accept the new clause.

Roger Berry: I will not detain the House long, as I have very little to add to what has already been said. I would certainly like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) on tabling the two new clauses, which I strongly support. I very much hope that the Government will accept them. I also thank others who have been named for their strong support for this reform.
	This is essentially a matter of greater social justice and greater equality. As Members supporting the new clauses have said, it makes no sense to recognise the mobility problems of someone who cannot physically walk, without giving equal recognition to the mobility problems of people who cannot get around due to loss of sight. Both groups of people face barriers to free movement. Many of us who spoke on Second Reading made that very point. We made it in the context of the Bill for reasons other than just social justice, because employability issues are also relevant.
	Both groups to which I referred face barriers that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), a long-term supporter of these changes, rightly said have a direct and negative impact on employability and their right to control their lives. Two thirds or between 60 and 70 per cent. of people with sight loss and of working age are not in work. As many organisations, including Leonard Cheshire Disability, have pointed out, these people face huge barriers, not least in relation to transport difficulties. We in the House do not need to look at the statistics to realise that, as we meet constituents every week, including those with sight loss, who face problems accessing public transport—and of course this is a problem that affects work. It is hardly surprising that visually impaired people are the group most likely to miss job interviews or to be unable to take up offers of employment due to transport difficulties.
	Let us consider the proposed changes. I accept that £29 is significant, but it is hardly a massively generous amount. It will make a significant contribution to improving people's mobility, but it will still leave many people facing real challenges if they have to go to work five days a week or just participate as members of society without going to work five days a week. They will still face real challenges, as £29 is not everything—but it is significant.
	I do not know for sure, but there appears to be a consensus this evening. No one has said anything to me, but there seems to be a feeling—sorry, Minister—that the Government might be inclined to support the new clauses. As others have pointed out, we have had supportive statements from the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) and, indeed, from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, so if the Government accept the new clauses, I believe that they should be congratulated on listening and acting accordingly.
	The Royal National Institute of Blind People has been working on this issue for a considerable period and it deserves very enthusiastic congratulations on what it has achieved by working with the Department for Work and Pensions officials and Ministers. It has developed the details of its case, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) has pointed out, over a significant period, so it really deserves our congratulations.
	Finally, no one should be cavalier about spending an extra £45 million a year, but given the level of public spending and given that the official Opposition are happy to make a commitment that would help millionaires pay substantially less inheritance tax than they do today— [Interruption.] Yes, certainly billionaires as well. It does seem a little odd if tax commitments of that kind, which are far more expensive than this one, can be made, if we cannot support this proposal, which would allow people with sight loss to participate more equally in society. I genuinely cannot understand the Opposition's priorities; they are certainly not mine. I know that they are not in government, so I very much hope that our Government will support the new clauses this evening.

Gordon Marsden: I join everyone else who has spoken this evening in paying great tribute to the tenacity of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) and also to that of the RNIB. I and fellow Fylde MPs were similarly lobbied in a sustained fashion—and quite rightly so—last October.
	Tonight's discussion about making a change to the disability living allowance is interesting if we reflect on the number of times we have had discussions in our constituency surgeries about DLA issues, and how often we have had to explain that it is not an automatic benefit. It is something given to people to allow them to get on with their lives despite their disabilities. It is an empowering and an enabling mechanism. That has been the whole thrust of the RNIB's campaign, which it has put to us as it has to so many others.
	Despite the organisational aspects, much of importance of the higher rate mobility component of the DLA comes back to the impact on individuals. I would like to speak briefly about one of my constituents, Carole Holmes, who is the chairman of the Blackpool Fylde and Wyre Society for the Blind. She is, in fact, the first visually impaired chairman of that society in its history. Last week she came to Buckingham Palace to receive an MBE medal for her services to visually impaired people. Let me share with the House what she wrote to me and, indeed, wrote in her local newspaper, in explaining why the change was so important. She wrote:
	"I am blind and a guide dog owner. Some years ago I was mugged at a railway station by 3 men. I've also had accidents and injuries when trying to get about with my guide dog. I'm unable to use public transport to reach some of the venues that I visit regularly... I need to use taxis as these venues are not on a bus route... If I had the higher rate of mobility component of Disability Living Allowance.. I would spend it on taxis."
	I am sure that taxi drivers in my constituency will be particularly pleased to hear that.
	"I would be pleased to be putting something back into the economy while feeling a lot safer.
	I... enjoy visiting the theatre... attending monthly book clubs and W.I. meetings. As most of these social activities are in the evening, once again I need to use taxis as the buses only run every half hour and are not always reliable. These days I don't feel safe stood at bus stops after dark."
	That is just one individual's experience, but it has been replicated in the numerous representations received by many Members on both sides of the House in the last few months. I know—not least because I heard what he said to the lobby last autumn, and not least because of his sensitive and sympathetic response to my Adjournment debate on Workstep a few months ago—that my hon. Friend the Minister has inherited from my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) the honourable tradition of thinking long and hard about these issues, and caring about them deeply. I hope that, on the basis of the strong and persuasive arguments advanced by Members in all parts of the House, the Government will feel able to proceed with this matter.
	The words with which Carole Holmes ended the article about her campaign in the  Blackpool Gazette underline the empowering and enabling aspects of the new clause:
	"I don't want to climb mountains. I just need it to get on with my life and be safe."
	Those are very humble but very noble aspirations, and I hope that they are aspirations with which the Government will find themselves concurring tonight.

Russell Brown: Let me begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) for tabling the new clauses, and—like others, I suspect—by congratulating one or two people who have been at the forefront of a campaign which has undoubtedly been led by the RNIB. It has not been just a campaign, though; it has been a campaign with a robust strategy behind it. This issue was never going to go away, and it needed to be addressed. I thank those at the forefront of the campaign, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett)—and it would of course be remiss of me not to mention the robust approach of the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill), who did so much to ensure that we would reach this stage. If this were a race, I sincerely hope that what stands before us this evening would be the last hurdle.
	Along with a small group of Back-Bench colleagues, I went to see the then Minister with responsibility for disability, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire). We emerged from that meeting with the impression that the door was at least partly open, and I thank my right hon. Friend for the work that she has done. Perhaps I should also thank officials in the Department. Although any decision made this evening will be a political decision, I assure the House that those officials have been working in the background, examining the policy that so many of us would like to see in operation. They worked—I was almost about to use unparliamentary language, Mr. Deputy Speaker—very hard indeed to take us to this point.
	Following up the meeting with my right hon. Friend, we had a further meeting with our good friend the Secretary of State. That meeting—again—came down to the question "Can we afford it?" We said that we had to afford it. When we left his office that day, I think that the words that were ringing in his ears were "If we need to go to the Treasury as a delegation, we will go there to make the case for the funding to make this happen for people."
	I have attended a number of events organised by the RNIB. On one of those occasions, I was told that there was a message for me. The message came in the form of a compact disc from a constituent of mine, a lady called Charlotte Bennie, whom I had met a couple of times. There were a number of different messages for different Members of Parliament, but the message to me was clear, and I listened to it as I travelled across my constituency one day. It took the best part of 40 minutes. The message described the difficulties that Charlotte experienced in life, getting around, and the difference that a little additional money would make.
	Along with many others, I attended the lobby in October. I was honoured to be able to address it, and I was honoured to be address the massive gathering in the Methodist Central Hall a little earlier.
	Let me make a comparison. I ask Members to think of the difference that they could make to people's lives. I look back to the early 1990s, when I served on Dumfries and Galloway regional council. At that time, as a minority administration, we introduced free bus passes for the elderly, which was ground-breaking stuff in those days. It opened up a new world to so many elderly people who had been confined to their homes. The small sum that is now being not just requested but—I must say this to my hon. Friend the Minister—demanded this evening may open up other areas that have been forgotten by those who are partially sighted and blind.
	I hope that the Department has listened, because I see this as the last chance saloon. Notwithstanding what was said by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone), there is a great fear among Labour Members that should my party be defeated at the next election—although I will not be defeatist in that regard—and should we not have secured what we seek tonight, it may not be delivered by those on the Conservative Benches. I think that, in 2009, there could be no more appropriate celebration of the bicentenary of Louis Braille than a Labour Government's agreement to what is being requested. We all wait to hear what our good friend the Minister has to say.

Jonathan R Shaw: This has been a very good debate, which has encapsulated the excellent campaign by the RNIB. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) on tabling the new clause. I well recall his eloquent words in Committee. Then as now, he was able to grasp and express the sense of injustice felt by many blind people in the absence of this important benefit. I am also grateful for what was said by many other Members, with which I shall deal later. They put forward compelling arguments in favour of making this important change.
	As the House knows, the campaign to extend the higher rate mobility component has been running for well over two years now, and throughout that time I and my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire)—the former Minister—have been engaged in numerous and fruitful discussions with the RNIB to see how we can progress this measure. Those discussions have been enormously helpful and have greatly assisted us to come to a shared understanding of what it would mean to extend the higher rate mobility component of the disability living allowance to severely sight-impaired people. For many, it can be very difficult to get out and about and to enter work. That means that thousands of people can become socially isolated—unable meaningfully to become independent, unable to indulge in the normal social pursuits non-disabled people take for granted, and unable to enter work or actively seek work.
	Through working with the RNIB, we have been able to come to a shared understanding of how we can define those with the most severe visual impairments such that they have no useful sight for orientation purposes. I am also grateful for the help and assistance we have received from numerous other organisations and professional bodies. In particular, I would like to thank the medical experts we have consulted such as ophthalmologists and optometrists, as well as Moorfields hospital, for the valuable professional and statistical advice and information they have been able to give us. I should also like to thank more generally the many thousands of people—many of whom have no sight difficulties—who have written, through their Member of Parliament, to me as the Minister for the disabled. This House has spoken with a consistent voice, as has been articulated by many Members this evening.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West began his remarks in moving this new clause by saying it was supported by the most popular early-day motion in this Parliament. Potentially then, I could perhaps become the most popular Minister. I am looking at my boss, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State; if that were to be the case, he could do my Adjournment debates and sign all my letters. He is not looking very enthusiastic, but there we are. That early-day motion had an extraordinarily high number of signatures from Members of different parties. My hon. Friend also rightly mentioned the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill), who is not in his seat at present, and the support he received from him and their working together.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) spoke in his usual way, setting out clearly for the House the difference this would make for blind people. Obviously, nobody in this debate is in a better position than him to inform us of such matters.
	The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) talked about the cold temperature in Westminster Hall even though, as other Members have said, many of our constituents made the difficult journey to come and lobby us. It is a journey people have to make every day, and he brought that home to us.
	I want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling. It is an honour to follow her in holding this ministerial post. The work she has done on this issue, and on many others, will stand the test of time. She is held in high regard in this House and among all those involved in disability issues. She worked very hard on this issue, and her hard work has made my work load that much easier. I thank her for her work.
	The hon. Member for Bournemouth, West has a proud and honourable record of campaigning on these matters. He talked about the lower rate mobility component having been introduced and the untapped pool of talent among blind people. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) reminded the House that 70 per cent. of blind people are not in work. Not only is their not being in work their loss, it is the rest of society's loss, and not just for social reasons, but for economic reasons as well. That applies among people with all the ranges of disabilities. We need to do more, working with businesses to ensure that that untapped pool of talent can be fully utilised; that must be done for the business case, as well as for the social case.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South spoke of the clarity of the RNIB's argument, and I think all colleagues would agree with her on that. The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) spelled out in his usual way how important it is for blind people to get this extra benefit, and the difference it would make to their lives. He also talked about the active campaign that has been run in Northern Ireland, and we are grateful to him for his contribution.
	The House recognises that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) has been a champion for disabled people for a long time, not just when it becomes a fashionable cause and many people seek to latch on to it.  [Interruption.] As an individual, however, he is extremely fashionable of course—far more so than the hon. Member for Northavon, and I am sure my hon. Friend can recommend a good tailor. My hon. Friend has a proud record, and he talked about the barriers that people face. He talked about how the mobility component was not just a social justice issue, but that it was necessary for employability. Members will know that we have increased the access to work budget that helps people to get a firm job offer or get into work. Obviously however, they need to do the round of interviews in the first place, and this measure would help.
	Social justice and employability go hand in hand. They are part of this Government's programme, and run through all the welfare reforms we are debating in this House this evening. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood said the £29 was not a massive amount, but he challenged the Opposition to say whether that was a massive amount when it came to providing millionaires and billionaires with tax cuts. That is, of course, about priorities, and shows which side of the argument we are on.
	I want to illustrate that point and refer to the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), who is a nice man. If the House will indulge me, I am going to provide a quote from the Committee stage—and it is a quote from me. I wish to do so not because it was a particularly good speech or contribution, but because it illuminates the Conservative position and how that has perhaps changed tonight. I said:
	"I thank the hon. Member for Rochdale for bringing forward a case on behalf of the hon. Member for Twickenham, and the hon. Member for Forest of Dean for setting out the information that I was able to supply."
	That information was provided in a written parliamentary question. I continued:
	"His lack of comment about whether he supported the proposal was deafening. Perhaps we will hear at a later stage whether he and the Conservative party have an opinion on this."
	He replied:
	"I am listening to you."
	I replied:
	"And we listened to the hon. Gentleman's very succinct remarks, which offered no opinion. I invite him...to give me an opinion."
	That silence was the pause from the transcript. I continued:
	"There we are, we have heard the opinion of the Conservative party." ——[ Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 269.]
	Well, it is not amateur dramatics, as the hon. Gentleman says; this is about trying to assist blind people and it depends on what side of the argument one is on.

Mark Harper: What the Minister is not saying, of course, is that I listened very carefully to what he said in Committee and that just two weeks ago he made it very clear that the Government did not have the funding to support this—as I said in my remarks, as late as yesterday they did not have the funding to support it. So, I hope that he tells us what has happened between now and then, and exactly how they are going to fund it. I said that if they are able to fund it, we would be pleased to support it—two weeks ago, he was not able to offer that guarantee.

Jonathan R Shaw: The hon. Gentleman has a policy on inheritance tax—he has made it clear that he wants to give millionaires and billionaires tax cuts. He is not prepared, however, to offer his view—he is not prepared to say whether this is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. I will provide him with the answer to his question shortly. If he purports to be a member of a party that wants to govern, he must demonstrate leadership and, on this issue, get off the fence that he has been on for a long time. He did not come to the Westminster Hall meeting that was described tonight by the hon. Member for Northavon—the Liberal Democrat spokesman came, and I spoke at it as did the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West—and neither did the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman. The Government have made our position clear: that we want to introduce this measure and it is a case of how and when we will be able to do so. The hon. Member for Forest of Dean has not been able to tell the House until this evening—we still do not think he has—whether he has a view on this.
	In my role as Minister for disabled people, I have also been able to voice my support for this measure. Indeed, when I spoke at the lobby that I mentioned, I gave an unequivocal nod towards the Government's commitment to it, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State equally demonstrated his support for the measure when said on Second Reading:
	"The Government do not have any objection to it in principle. They totally understand the case that is being made."—[ Official Report, 27 January 2009; Vol. 487, c. 186.]
	In the past I have said that progress was not a matter of if, but when and how. The "how"—in terms of who may be within the scope, which we have discussed this evening— has been largely worked out. As I explained in Committee and on the Floor of the House, the "when" has been about how we finance this important measure, given that we are in the midst of the economic downturn. In Committee, I explained that we did not have the resources to fund this measure but were committed to this important change. I said:
	"When we are in a position to finance a change to the rules, we are firmly committed to make that change an urgent priority and to do so at the earliest possible time." ——[ Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 271.]
	The costs are not inconsiderable and a commitment to change must be taken in the broader context of stabilising the economy and helping people remain in, or return to, work. We have considered this measure in the context of these issues, and recognise that it will bring about considerable economic and social benefits to severely sight-impaired people. I am therefore delighted to announce today that we are now in a position to agree to fund this proposal, and I take great pleasure in accepting new clause 10, as tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 New clause 4  accordingly  read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Amendment proposed: 11, in clause 1, page 1, line 11, leave out 'imposing on' and insert 'offering to'.— (John McDonnell.)
	 Question put, That the amendment be made.
	 The House divided: Ayes 76, Noes 396.

Amendment proposed: 35, in page 4, line 22 , at end insert—
	'(A1) This section does not apply in the case of a single parent with a child under five years of age.'.— (Mr. Clappison.)
	 Question put, That the amendment be made.
	 The House divided: Ayes 217, Noes 260.

James Purnell: I am very happy to consider whether Essex would be a good candidate, and I would be happy for the hon. Gentleman to make a representation on that.
	The proposals in the Bill are right because they will give people more help to get back into work. We should be thinking not just about people who are on the JSA account but about lone parents and those who are sick and disabled. If we did not take the proposals forward now, as some people have suggested, that would mean less help for the people who are furthest away from the labour market. That is precisely the mistake that was made in the past, and we will not repeat it.
	In this Third Reading debate so far, it has been interesting to see the irritation on the Opposition Front Bench at my accusation that the Opposition are opposing the Bill. The facts are absolutely clear. When asked about the drugs proposals, the predecessor of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) said that
	"We should just apply the current rules",
	and that the proposals were window dressing. When the proposals to take passports and driving licences away from people who do not live up to their responsibilities went to the other place, the Conservatives ensured that it did not go through. Tonight, when asked whether they would support the reforms in the Bill, having said that they would do so, they voted against them. They are not serious about welfare, and tonight the whole country can see that.

James Purnell: The right hon. Lady's party has just voted against it in the last Division. I do not know what planet she is on—it is quite extraordinary. The test of whether the Opposition support the Bill is whether they vote for it. How could it be less complicated? Her party's leader said that the Bill would go through only with the Opposition's support. They tried to have a political strategy of having their cake and eating it, but it has exploded in the faces of her and her leader. They oppose the welfare reform proposals. When we pointed out that they were opposing treatment for people who are addicted to drugs, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell said in the  Daily Express on Thursday 11 December—I can quote the article if the right hon. Lady wants—that we were "window dressing" and that we should simply "apply the current rules". When we outlined what the Opposition were effectively opposing, they beat a retreat because they were embarrassed. When we pointed out that they opposed ensuring that passports and driving licences could be taken away from deadbeat dads, they were embarrassed and ran away from that position. Tonight, they were not clever enough to work out that their political strategy would expose the fact that they are not serious about welfare reform. That is what we conclude from the debate.

Steve Webb: The Bill has two redeeming features. One is the additional powers and control that disabled people will have over services. We were unable to talk about those measures today, but we welcome them none the less. The second is the additional support for blind people that has been added to the Bill this evening, and which we also very much welcome. Without those two redeeming features, we would have had no hesitation in opposing what is otherwise a nasty Bill. The Committee did their best to scrutinise the Bill, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) for his work in that regard. However, the remainder of the Bill is a very worrying piece of legislation.
	We were just about to get on to the provisions for people with drug addictions, but we did not do so because we again ran out of time. I hope, however, that our noble Friends in another place will have been looking in on our debates and will perform the scrutiny that—notwithstanding the efforts of my hon. Friend and others—we were unable to do in this House. The provisions for people with drug addictions are profoundly flawed.
	The serious addiction problem that we have today is the Secretary of State's addiction to cheap headlines, to talking tough and to yet more welfare crackdowns. What have we had this evening? We have had deadbeat dads, money going to drug dealers and all the rest of it. Behind all the rhetoric, however, we find ineffective policy and, for all the talk, the plans for people with drug addictions are profoundly worrying. The Government have admitted, for example, that people with a serious drug habit who are on £60 a week jobseeker's allowance will clearly be involved in crime, because they cannot feed themselves and their drug habit on £60 a week.
	The Government's answer to such people is to threaten to take their money away unless they accept forced treatment. The Secretary of State said that no one was being forced to do anything and, of course, they are welcome to say no if they want to have their money taken away. The Government are breaching an important principle here. The Secretary of State is a thoughtful man, and it is rather disturbing that he has blinded himself to the principle that we do not force people to take treatment. He said that they would simply have to come in for a conversation and an appraisal, but if the appraisal found that treatment was appropriate and the individual did not accept that—or, more realistically, if they accepted it but were unable to stick to it because of the chaotic lifestyle that many of these people lead—they would face the threat of their money being taken away.
	I have a simple question for the Secretary of State. Assuming that these powers are ever used, what does he think would happen next? Let us suppose that the arrangements were not 100 per cent. successful, and that some people failed to meet the conditions and were sanctioned under the powers in the Bill. What does he think would happen next? Does he think that those people would come to their senses and snap out of it and that all would be well? Or might they find some other way of getting money? Is that really what we want?
	There is far too much stick in the Bill, and not nearly enough incentives. The Government have pilot programmes for people with drug problems, and they have proved effective. However, they have been based on incentives and encouragement, and on getting alongside people, not on threatening them. The Bill is riddled with new threats and new incursions into people's liberties, which we do not support. There are new provisions for taking away passports and driving licences, for example. That can already be done now, but the Government want to be able to do it without reference to a court. Their lordships threw that proposal out last time, and I hope that they will do so again.
	There are also new sanctions for people who have not committed an offence, but who might have accepted a caution because they did not want the hassle of a court case. They will now be able to have their money taken off them more readily, as will people who fail to make it to interviews. That is not to mention the change to the social fund, which we did not even get round to discussing, whereby the Government originally threatened store card rates of interest on people. They then backed off, but we do not know what they are going to do; we have no idea. This Bill is riddled with provisions that give Ministers an excuse for tough talk, but the policies that lie behind that talk are often ineffective.
	On Report, the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned something that the Ministry of Justice had done. It is interesting to note that the ministry is responsible for evidence, but when it tried out a benefit sanction for people who did not keep their community orders, it said, after several years of trying the scheme, that the evidence showed that it did not work. The ministry stopped the scheme, but the Department for Work and Pensions does not stop doing things when they do not work; it just talks tougher and passes another piece of legislation without waiting to see whether the last one has worked.
	Let me now put a prediction on the record: the drug addict provisions will run for a couple of years, and then there will be a report. The policies should be carried out only if subject to an affirmative resolution, but the Government will press ahead with them simply on account of their dogma of talking tough. They will not want to sound as if they are not talking tough, so they will press on.
	As I have said, if it were not for the redeeming features of the Bill, it would give my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale and me the greatest pleasure to oppose what is a fundamentally nasty Bill. The redeeming features are the provisions for disabled people and the new provisions for blind people, which we will not oppose. However, I hope that our noble Friends in the other place will do a lot to take out the fundamentally illiberal and ineffective proposals that run all the way through the Bill.

John Mason: We have seen a major U-turn by the Government. We welcome the increase in disability living allowance for people with sight problems, and for that single reason we will not vote against the Bill. However, I believe that it is a deeply flawed Bill, and, indeed, a Tory Bill with Labour window-dressing. Last July, during the Glasgow, East by-election, I said that there was no real difference between Labour and the Conservatives, and it seems to me that the Bill proves that fact.
	There are some good things in the Bill, and we are happy to welcome them. The basic concept of enabling everyone who can work to do so is a good one, but it does require work to be available. Are the Government doing enough to create jobs? I do not think so. They could have used the money from the VAT cut to pay for capital projects, but they did not. They could have given borrowing powers to Scotland and Wales, but that has not happened, although it would have increased the number of jobs.
	This seems a strange time at which to introduce such a Bill. If the underlying aim is to move people into work, how does that tie in with there being fewer and fewer jobs? We hear that there are 10 applicants for every job. If the Government are pushing one way to get people into work and the real world is pushing the other way—pushing people out of work—who will be caught in the middle? Surely it will be the ordinary, vulnerable people.
	No one referred to claimants on drugs today, but I should have liked to discuss them, because they constitute one of the clearest examples of vulnerable people being hit by the Government. If we cut the benefits of people on drugs, what will happen to their children? What will happen to their families? Do we expect elderly grandparents on limited means to supply their food? Do we pressurise the parents to resort to crime—as has been mentioned—or do we expect the children to go without food?
	It is easy for us in this place to become detached from reality. We have good salaries and umpteen eating places. The other week, however, a constituent came to my office who, for various reasons, had not eaten for three days that week. I do not think that that is acceptable in 2009, and I fear that the Bill will make matters worse.
	We took evidence in Committee, and I asked about what would happen to the kids of drug addicts if the parents' benefits were cut. One charity that supported conditionality could not answer that question. In Committee, the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform said that the ideas about what would happen were fatuous and vacuous. He has been using such words quite a lot recently, and his resorting to personal attacks shows that his argument is weak.
	We have devolved Governments nowadays, and there is nothing wrong with trying different approaches in different places. By all means, we can use England as a guinea pig for this, but we will watch and we will learn, and we will see what we want to do in our country. I do not think there is any need to get all hot and bothered because Scotland will not do things exactly the same as England. Let us have a constructive relationship between our countries. Let us not start fights with each other when we do not need to.  [Laughter.] I will repeat that, as some Members might not have caught what I said: let us not start fights when we do not need to. We believe that access to treatment should be based on clinical need, not receipt of benefits. The Scottish Government are spending £29.5 million on tackling drug misuse this year and have been widely praised by experts in the drugs field.
	Conditionality might work in certain circumstances, but it requires that people receive extra over the minimum benefits, so that that extra might be conditional and might be taken away. However, I believe the benefit level is so low at the moment that we cannot justifiably take any of it away.
	Both in this Chamber and in Committee, we have been assured by Ministers that jobcentres will individualise and personalise their support and requirements for each individual. Do we believe that? There are superb individuals working in jobcentres, but is it possible for such a huge grinding bureaucracy truly to be concerned about the individual? Just this week, I learned of a taxi driver who had been off sick. Because of a pension, he is getting only £5.16 per week in benefits, but he has been called in for a medical assessment. What will the medical assessment cost? How is that possibly personal care? The Secretary of State may be well intentioned and give assurances in this Chamber, but is the legislation going to be applied in a harsh and draconian way?
	I promised my constituents that I would judge issues at Westminster by how they affected the gap between rich and poor. In this recession, we see top bankers who have virtually destroyed their banks and half the economy walking away with knighthoods and handsome pensions. In this Bill, we see those at the bottom of society being squeezed more and more. There is something wrong with that.

That the draft Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 11 February, be approved.— (Ms Diana R. Johnson.)
	 The House divided: Ayes 241, Noes 93.

Patrick McFadden: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Michael Jabez Foster) on securing this debate on post offices in Rye. I know that he cares passionately about post office services. He is an excellent constituency MP, and he campaigns assiduously on behalf of the people of Hastings and Rye, not only on this issue but across the board.
	It is not the first time that we have debated the issue. There was an Adjournment debate just over a year ago about post office services in his constituency. I hope that my hon. Friend would agree that we are in a somewhat different position now. The network change programme has drawn to a close. Post Office Ltd has been awarded the new contract for the card account for pensions and benefits. That will help to secure the network of around 11,500 branches. As he said, the Government have committed to a subsidy of £150 million a year over the coming years, which means that the Post Office can look forward to a period of greater stability than it has had for some time.
	My hon. Friend's concerns, quite fairly, relate to the provision of post office services in his constituency, and Rye in particular. He is particularly concerned about recent events affecting the service at Rye post office. We have corresponded on the subject, and he has had extensive contact with the management of Post Office Ltd on the issue.
	Post office services in Rye have certainly been disrupted a number of times in recent months. I appreciate that that has caused concern and frustration to my hon. Friend and, even more importantly, to his constituents. As he will know, there were problems between Post Office Ltd and a former sub-postmaster, which resulted in temporary provision outwith the usual location. Of course, that caused confusion and a degree of frustration to local people, but I believe that Post Office Ltd did what it could to ensure continuity of service. However, I accept that that was not ideal for his constituents, and that a permanent solution has to be found in Rye.
	As my hon. Friend has made clear, throughout the period, he has assiduously pursued with Post Office Ltd his concerns about how the issue was handled, and about the continuity of service for his constituents in Rye and in nearby Tilling Green. I do not want to repeat the debate that we had last year about the network change programme and the closures in his constituency, but I want to put on record that following that debate, and the closures in his constituency, Post Office Ltd picked one of the locations in his constituency to pilot a new service, Post Office Essentials, which is a lower-cost way of providing post office services. Of course, it is early days for that service, but I understand that so far it appears to be working well. We will monitor that model closely to see whether it might be applicable more widely, in other locations.
	Let me return to the situation in the post office in Rye. In essence, the Rye post office was run on the same premises by a temporary sub-postmaster on behalf of Post Office Ltd throughout the period in question, until Friday 6 February this year. As a result of rapidly escalating concerns about continued access to the post office premises—my hon. Friend referred to some of those concerns in his speech—Post Office Ltd took the decision to close the office at 3 pm on a Friday afternoon to remove cash and stock and vacate the building. As a result, no post office service was available in Rye on the Saturday morning. However, by the next working day, Monday 9 February, Post Office Ltd had been able to establish an interim post office service in a nearby vacant shop. That interim branch was open for 42 hours a week until more suitable temporary arrangements could be established.
	By 21 February, two days earlier than originally scheduled, a three-counter position branch had opened, providing service from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm Monday to Friday and 8.30 am to 1 pm on Saturdays under the management of a new sub-postmaster. More importantly, work was also being done to identify a longer-term solution to post office services in Rye. Subject to local consultation and resolution of a planning issue, it is planned to introduce a new state of the art post office in Rye as part of a £2 million redevelopment of Jempsons Budgens supermarket.
	My hon. Friend spoke with some frustration about the inability to influence events, and I appreciate that it has been a frustrating time for his constituents, but the new post office appears to offer a long-term solution and it is anticipated that it will be completed in about six months. That should provide a good post office service for the people of Rye, which both he and I want.
	My hon. Friend has argued for the establishment of a Post Office Essentials service to replace the former post office provision in Tilling Green, akin to the Post Office Essentials service that exists elsewhere in his constituency at Old Town in Hastings. As I said, that is a lower-cost model of delivering core post office services—perhaps not every service, but most of the commonly used services—which is being piloted in both urban and rural areas. I understand that Post Office Ltd has looked carefully at that suggestion but believes that it could adversely impact on the viability of the new post office at Rye, and in particular on the business plans on which the development of the new, improved post office facility is based.
	I always tread carefully at this point in Adjournment debates because I am not familiar with the local geography, and obviously my hon. Friend knows his constituency very well. I understand that distance does not tell us everything, and that communities can be distinct, but I am told that Rye post office is little over 0.6 of a mile from Tilling Green and that there is a bus service between the two locations. One of the difficult decisions that Post Office Ltd will have to make when deciding the provision of service is the viability of the existing post office network.
	That was the reason behind the National Federation of SubPostmasters' acceptance, albeit with reluctance, of the closures over the past year. It understood that the number of post offices in existence a couple of years ago simply did not have enough work in the face of changing lifestyles and a reduction of custom of some 5 million customers a week to sustain those branches. The viability of existing post offices or, in this case, planned future post offices affects the decision. I hope that the new post office planned for the Jempsons store will provide a long-term solution.
	As my hon. Friend said, the Government are in the midst of providing £1.7 billion to support the post office network over 2006-11. We do that because we do not believe that that is a purely commercial network. If it ran as a purely commercial network, instead of 11,500 branches we would probably have closer to 4,000 branches. We will continue to subsidise this socially and economically important network right up until 2011. Although I cannot commit to numbers beyond that, I believe the social value of the post office and the Government's recognition of that will continue beyond that date.
	As the network change programme draws to a close, we are able to ensure greater stability for the post office network, with the card account decision having been taken and new Government services such as the savings gateway being available through the post office. There is an appetite to secure new services for the Post Office that may not have been there in the past. Part of that is down to the post office network's reaching out and developing new services; today, in fact, we have been discussing an expansion in banking and financial services for the Post Office. That could bring significant new custom to post office branches.
	I cannot say yes to my hon. Friend's proposal for Tilling Green. Post Office Ltd has considered it, and it was happy to support the Post Office Essentials service elsewhere in his constituency. I hope that the new provision planned for the Jempsons Budgens store in Rye offers a long-term solution. I understand that there has been a lack of continuity in the services for the constituents of Rye in recent months. We do not, of course, want that to continue; we want a more permanent solution. It seems as if the plans are now in place and I believe that that will make a difference to post office services in his constituency, give local people the continuity of service that they reasonably expect and offer greater satisfaction, for which he has campaigned skilfully and determinedly in recent years.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.
	Correction
	 Official Report, 16 March 2009: In col. 742, in the Noes, delete "Wilson, Mr. Rob".